This is a bit of a personal post today, so sit back for a quick self-reflection and some of my favorite images from the California Coastline.
I had been putting this off for some time but finally got around to going though our old photos from California 2009. After our trip in August 2009 we put a few photos up for sale as postcards on Zazzle, and surprisingly they started selling! I knew we wouldn’t get rich quick off of Zazzle (I think we make $0.01 per sale) but it was a nice validation that other people out there enjoyed our early photography as much as we enjoyed shooting it.
While I think our editing techniques were okay back then, I’ve definitely picked up a thing or two since then I hope! I wanted to give our photos another go around and apply our learnings one year later to see where it lead me, little did I know this whole process also lead me on my own journey.
Now I’m not sure if this all came about because of a post I recently read over on GoingPro2010 entitled “Keep Me – Protect Me – Share Me” which features an old Kodak commercial with the message that our photos contain our memories that need to be protected, and shared. At the end of the post we are challenged to take our work as photographers very seriously, for we are in the business of protecting memories (think once in a lifetime events like a wedding).
When we migrated to Lightroom 3 we lost our old catalog, so I had to re-import these California photos and then go through and flag the good ones again. Not that big of a deal since I wanted to go through all of them again and see if I noticed something new this time that I may have missed the last time I looked at these. Day 1 we landed in San Jose and toured the, saw Google HQ, but nothing too special in San Jose – lots and lots of office parks. We then went to San Francisco and Big Sur which is when the memories started flooding back as I looked over those photos one year later.
As I flipped through the photos in Lightroom I was immediately transported back to California, and all the great memories from the trip. Have you ever felt that way about a place you visited? A deeper sense of belonging that just felt right deep down inside? Unfortunately Orlando never really felt like this to me and even other places I’ve traveled in the US were nice, but not “right.” China was like this and so was Northern California to me, specifically San Francisco and Big Sur.
I kept thinking back to the Kodak commercial as the feelings washed over me from when we were in California.
Keep Me – Take the time to revisit your old photos once in a while, can you see something you didn’t see the first time?
Protect Me – Cherish the memories… and don’t forget your backup strategy so that you can revisit them a year later!
Share Me – No one will see your photos sitting on your hard drive, if you don’t have your own site use services like Flickr to get your work out there.
Thank you for the time indulge me with this personal reflection post! -Zac
