As I’ve been learning about photography while I save up to buy a new camera, one exercise is to go through old photos and purge purge purge leaving only the ones I think stand out. I’m not really “tossing” any, because apparently the only thing I’m a packrat about is photographs. Maybe it’s because at some point I threw away all the snapshots I took as a kid, and I really regret that. So the good ones are going in a special folder, the rest are archived away.
I have shots going back to 2002- everything before then (and some from 2002 & 2003) are film and still need to be scanned. Some of the earlier shots are film shots I scanned earlier, but most are native digital. I’ve run most through Photoshop, Lightroom, or both. I’m a big fan of taking the raw material of a snapshot and seeing what I can do to make it pop, especially when I’m dealing with photos from a low-end digital camera or film scans. When I get a better camera, maybe I’ll be happy with the images right off the memory card. But probably not. I’m a ruthless editor, too- after the first purge I’m down to fewer than 200 photos- out of over 20,000 since 2002. Yes. Twenty thousand photos. Wow.
I think most of my favorites have appeared here over the years, but I’ll post them now and then, repeats or not.

Nick, LBI, July 2, 2004