Boats On Cropston Reservoir

Two old images today, both of the same subject, taken on the same day.

When I got my first DSLR in late 2008 I didn’t really consider just how much space all these raw files where going to take up, and I certainly didn’t think about organising the files - each outings images just went in a folder and I processed the ones I liked the most. As you can imagine, when you use the camera a lot it doesn’t take that long before this gets messy, so towards the end of 2009 I started having a bit of a tidy up. This also gave me chance to review images that I’d missed first time around - things that I’d overlooked in favour of different compositions.

The day these photos were taken was a bit of a breakthrough day for me - prior to that I’d been trying too hard to become “a photographer”. I was too obsessed with composition and trying to take “great photos” but I hadn’t the learnt the things that I now find more important, the non technical things like enjoying the beauty of your surroundings and trying to capture some of what you feel in the scene.

The photo below was the one I chose from this scene at the time but when going back through the shots I found the one above, with its open space and gentle ripples, which I now like far more. It just goes to show how important it is to review your old shots