Nothing like revisiting photographs that are hither and yon to bring home the concept of organizing your photographic work, and placing value on each and every image you keep.  

It was that kind of weekend, and yesterday in particular, when the wind was howling and waves of grey-purple clouds were moving across the mesa that yielded snow, graupel, and everything in between to bring on those organizational skills.  

I am privileged to know many photographers, and I suspect I am not alone in my thinking about and delay of organization.  We would much rather be shooting.  Having written about this before in blogs, I write again as a reminder to self to get my act together, and to realize that regardless of the photo shoot being random or educational, or it being a project or assignment, each has value.  One person, a group, buildings, nature, travel - each should have its own category and file.  My slides and black and white projects are very well organized.  But then, there are the files marked "People - black and white", which means that to know what is in that file, I need to go through the file in its entirety.  That could be good because you see your work afresh and perhaps from a new perspective.  But, on the other hand, it involves time.  And then there is the ultimate photographer's sin - leaving a proof sheet or sleeved negatives without a date when they were made.  The negative may say "Ilford HP", signifying the type of film, but self-developing leaves no date.  And darned if I don't have sets of those.  Then there are slides that were made into prints or prints for which I have no negatives, or were digitized onto floppies that can be no longer accessed in the current format.

The great thing about all of my viewing the past few days was seeing images I had completely forgotten, and wondered why I had not digitized them.   Like the image below of the owner of Zorba's tavern on Crete.  I had previously used one of him I thought was better, but this one is casual and on the wild side, which is lovely.

Zorba

There are several shots from Crete and Santorini that, for some unknown reason, I had not bothered to scan, such as the one below.   Santorini scene

Two more slides that were dormant in their files are below.  The first of bamboo on Kauai and the second of a hotel complex in Cabo San Lucas. Beautiful, bold paint and architecture, but the slide needed some attention.

Hawaii bamboo 2

Cabo San Lucas hotel area

Any working photographer has quite a body of work that probably needs to be revisited from time to time.  The long and short of this morning's blog is a lesson - shoot, download, label, print, and organize.  I am no longer counting on a particular format but printing so that if a format/computer/electronic system/program changes, an image can still be scanned.  Yes, second generation but at least you have it.  It is one's digital negative or physical memory. 

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image@