Revisiting Images
I recently hinted at trying to revisit some (very) old photographs to re-work them to see how I would develop them now and . . . walked away horribly disappointed. I tried to work on several, all from 7-8 years ago, over several weekends and, for whatever reason, could not produce a result that pleased me. At least pleased me anywhere near the way the original finished version did. Sometimes you’ve just got to walk away from what you thought was a good idea.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s good reason for one to revisit old photographs. Sometimes it helps to remind yourself how far you’ve come, sometimes it reminds you of concepts that you’ve forgotten about and want to work more on, and sometimes it helps to scratch creative itches (that’s what I was hoping for). That approach is about images that you’ve made and are (or at least were) pleased with. For me, those images are easy to find because they’re colored and starred in my Lightroom catalog.
After my frustrations with working with older previously developed images, I recalled that it has been quite some time since I’ve revisited recent-old work. This post is about that process. Revisiting old images to see what you missed. That means skipping the colored favorite images and looking at the ones you previously passed over for whatever reason. Yeah, sometimes it’s depressing because, face it, you passed over working on them the first time (or two, or three) you looked at them and, for the most part, most of them haven’t gotten any better. But every once in a while you look at an image, remember why you took it, and then see in your mind how to realize that vision. Maybe you can realize it now because you’ve learned a technique or two you didn’t have back then. Maybe you remember some aspect of what you were trying to capture that wasn’t obvious the previous go-arounds (because you were too enamored with other, more easily accessible images). Whatever the reason, you stop now to work on it. But to get to that point, you have to go back in time and slowly, thoughtfully work your way through images, all of the ones without color or star labels, and ask yourself, “Is there something there I missed before?”
So it was I decided to not go so far back in time and decided to revisit the images from the trip I took with Len in 2023 (was it really that long ago?). And I started at the beginning. It wasn’t until I got to the Canyon de Chelly images that something flickered in the back of my mind. There was a series of images I’d made from the vantage points by Spider Rock looking down to the valley floor below. On my first go-throughs, they all looked uninspiring, unlike the images of Spider Rock, several of which included this area as part of a larger image.
At the time, I recall making my images of Spider Rock, switching lenses to focus on this area for several images, and then switching lenses again returning to broader views and different compositions that included Spider Rock. Once back home, I recall upon revisiting these images initially that they felt a bit lifeless and I wasn’t sure what to do with them, so I bypassed them in favor of easier images to develop.
This time around I stopped on the image below and remembered just how beautiful it was. Subtle in its coloration, wonderfully lit, but not overly dramatic. None of that was plainly evident in the raw file on my screen. So I began to work with the image to bring that out. I realized that one of the problems was that, by pointing the camera downward and filling the frame with the landscape, the camera had given it more exposure than the other shots, diminishing the effects of the shadows. So I worked on giving the shadows back the mystery that had been lost, which then increased the effect of the streaking sunlight and, surprisingly, bringing out the multitudes of colors in the trees and grasses that had been lost with the undeveloped original exposure.
That’s why you revisit images. Sometimes they (or you, or both) just need time.
Looking at the other images from that set, only one other image struck me as interesting, but in a different way. It was an intuitive feeling; I just couldn’t put my finger on why. So I worked it a bit, and then realized that I needed to convert it into black and white.
Then came the realization that it also didn’t need (or want) to be a literal depiction of the landscape. So I started looking at it as I would a graphic detail the of photograph, pushing the shadow areas to extremes, and then backing off until it “felt right.”
Again, it was remembering why I made the image and then figuring out how to express that in development.
I suspect that you’ll be seeing more of these types of post as I work my way through that trip.
Len recently sent us a link to a video that asked the question, “Why do we (you) photograph”” It was an interesting, thought provoking video and the answer for me at least is really simple - for myself. To see, and hopefully understand and appreciate, the world differently. To have an excuse to satisfy a desire to explore the world, visually. All of this, the blog, developing images, planning trips, is all a way to satisfy that desire to see, to photograph. So these revisiting older images posts are a way for me to keep in touch with image-making while we try our best to get things settled around here so we can return home to photograph the landscapes we very so miss. Which means very little new photography. (Note - it’s not happening nearly as quickly as we’d hoped, but it’s happening (fingers crossed)).
Then again, the urge may become unbearable (for both of us) and we’ll head out, cameras in hand, to scratch that itch.