Stay with me a paragraph or two more – I really am going somewhere with this.

Well, just like that old van showing up 35 years later, for everybody who has been a photographer for at least five years or more, what if you were to take an hour and go back and look at the very first images you ever captured.  Let’s qualify those images a little more.  They have to be images that created income for you.  In otherwords, you thought you were good enough to get paid and proud of it.

How much fun is it to see how much your style has changed and how much better you now understand the process?  What’s changed in your sense of timing, composition and exposure?  It’s a pretty safe bet that most of you in just a few years will see changes in your skill set that compare to the range of ties I still can’t bring myself to throw out.  I’ve got Jerry Garcia ties wide enough to make into vests.

I recently found a disk of images from my first professional digital camera, which I still have.  It was a 3 megapixel gift from a good friend, then a senior manager at Eastman Kodak.  The images are from a family vacation and while they bring back memories, the quality compares with looking at faded Kodachromes of my Dad’s from the 50’s!

So, if you’re looking for an educational experience that’s both fun and will give you some insight into how much you’ve grown, go back and look at your early images.   Think about how styles and technology constantly change.  Better yet, day dream for a second and tell me what your images are going to look like five or ten years from now!