Revisiting an Old Photo
What makes a good photo? I’m in the midst of a project to transition my ~20,000 photos — spanning middle school to present — from my old folder system in Lightroom Classic to a cloud-based and album-based system in Lightroom CC (yay iPad workflows!). Going through my photos from years past has forced me to revisit my old favorite photos. And specifically, revisit why I thought they were great. Let’s take this photo for example:
Photo form camera, no “filters”. Olympus E-M5 , 45mm (90mm eq) at f/4.0.
I was obsessed with this photo for quite a while. I had just bought my Olympus E-M5 — a great little micro four-thirds camera — and was for the first time in my life getting some serious subject isolation. At the time I loved the isolation here, the flower by itself with out-of-focus elements both in front of and behind the main flower subject. I loved the light hitting the flowers. And in my mind I could smell the field in central Montana where I took the photo..
But this photo just isn’t working for me anymore. It’s perfectly fine photo. I just ask myself “why?”. Does this photo make me feel anything? Yes and no. It brings up fond memories of that trip to our old cabin and the summer smell of Montana’s prairies. But the photo by itself doesn’t make me feel anything. Like I mentioned, I think the photo is fine — I like how the evening light catches and outlines the plants in a halo, and how the hill in the far background is no longer in the light, causing a nice contrast in tones. The photo roughly follows the rule of thirds, for better or worse, and I do like how there is depth, with the out-of-focus flowers and plants in the foreground bottom-left. But overall, I just don’t feel anything apart from my memories when I look at this photo.
Maybe I just don’t like photos of flowers!
How much should an individual photo stand on its own? Of course some photos completely stand on their own, and tell a story in and of themselves. But not all. And just because a given photo doesn’t stand on its own doesn’t mean it has no artistic worth. One thing I love about this little blog is that I have to think about multiple photos. I have to think about all the ways to convey the experience of a trip. If every photo of a trip report was wide vistas or portraits, it would be a rather boring trip report. It wouldn’t get across the details.
What if I had a couple other photos form the same day? While I’m not a fan of either of these new photos, adding the two so the above flowers stand in context does tell a different story, and I think a more holistic story.
Or maybe I’m just completely wrong about all of this. I have no idea. All I know is I’m trying to think more deliberately about my photos, especially my old photos. And I know I’m a better photographer than I was five years ago. But I know I have a long ways to go.
