Photographic Milestones

This is one of my personal favourites, it looks incredible in print.

Unless you've more money than sense then you shouldn't invest hundreds of pounds/dollars/euros/cowry shells in something like a DSLR and then fail to put in the effort to get reasonably good at using it. Whether photography is a hobby or something you aspire to do as an occupation, the more you do it the better you (should) get. Over the past couple of months I've been spending quite a bit of time looking through my back-catalogue and taking note of the images that I really like, or those I am quietly proud of. I've also been trying to work out whether you can see developments and changes in my images over time.

One of the things I'm trying to identify is the first time I took a shot that I impressed myself with and where I actually understood how I'd done it and why it was any good. Why would I do such a thing? Because I'm trying to work out how photographic skills and abilities develop, which hopefully will be more useful to myself and others than the usual 'try and visualise...' of the typical 'How to do Photography' book.

Another thing I've been trying to work out is what my 'best' photograph is. It's all subjective of course...I could just use Flickr as a judge, but as I've already pointed out a few times I have my suspicions about the Flickr interestingness recipe, not least because any image which makes explore is automatically skewed. Maybe I should get someone else to judge, run a competition or something, but frankly it's only really of interest to me so I doubt anyone would bother to join in. 'Art' is such an abstract and personal thing - as a look at the average Turner Prize winner will demonstrate.

How about the best photo I have of a particular subject? Or my best black and white? All these are things that I could perhaps identify and attempt to improve upon. My favourite bit of editing? My best SOOC shot? I have a nagging feeling that my catalogue of images might well benefit from such an assessment. As I write, and for the first time since I don't know when, Lightroom doesn't actually have a couple of dozen images waiting to be polished. This might be an opportunity to sit down and work all these things out...but then again it probably just means that I need to get out and shoot some more!