Your not really going to delete those files are you?!

Northern Monarch

Ok so you have been out photographing, you've come home and downloaded the images on your card, or had your film developed. Hopefully you don't leave those images on that card! Now that you have looked at the photographs you thought were the real keepers, the ones you just couldn't wait to see, now what?

If you are like me, and I would think most people are, you pick out the ones that were exactly what you thought they would be and sent them off to the printer excitedly waiting for them to arrive. But what about the other images, you know, the ones you didn't even take the time to look at, what about them? Do you delete those files to make room for more images on your hard drive?

I know I may be bad, but I don't delete anything, I have three external hard drives that are loaded with images.  Some I have never even bothered to look at, others absolutely need to be deleted, you know the ones that are out of focus, or blurry because it was low light and you were in to much of a hurry to use the tripod! Some images need to go, but others, well you never know.

Recently, I was actually working on cleaning up my hard drives, moving images from one to the other for long term storage, deleting the ones that should never see the light of day. As I was looking through the files I found some that I had totally forgotten about.

On one of our trips to Oregon, we had left Gold's Beach in Oregon and headed to California, as we were going through the Redwoods there was this little side road that turned into a dirt road as it headed down the hillside to the coast.

 While we were at the coast I took several photos of all sorts of things!  There were these slender emerald green trees with a little stream running through them, cliffs that dropped off from the hillside above, and these beautiful elk. Initially I had chosen a photo of an elk with the cliffs behind it, and a couple of the little trees.

 Several of the elk photos were blurry from not using a tripod, I didn't want to lose the opportunity so I just held as steady as possible (in those days there was no image stabilization) and shot away, because you know how wild animals are...gone in a flash, no pun intended!

As I was looking through these files I came across the elk photos, looking at the blurry ones, shaking my head I found a couple of little gems, I guess I had held steadier than I had thought.

I guess the point is-sometimes immediate house cleaning may cost you some beautiful photographic gems.  But looking through those files, sometime years later, may reveal some things you missed the first time.


So before you throw them out, set those images aside for another day, a day when you can look at them with a less jaundiced eye toward your lack of being perfect, because you just may be more perfect than you think!.


Thanks for looking.
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Now go out and make it a picture perfect day!!

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