Kneejerk Imagery

It's been a good long while since I've done any people/model photography. Strange, too, because it's something I very much enjoy.

The other night I had a friend over and we tossed back a good handle-and-a-half of and in our inebriated stupor we both developed a keen sense of nostalgia. Because let's face it, the times have changed dramatically in the past 2 decades, and as a result we've changed as people (and sometimes more than once). In a culture dominated by digital it wouldn't be a stretch to state that our lives move at a digital pace to keep up with an ever broadening and amorphous world. Moving at that pace, it isn't difficult to lose sight of who you are, who you used to be, what you've accomplished and where you've come from.

Random nonsensical sentimentalism led me back to my old DeviantArt gallery, the host of my artwork during my high school days. I never closed the account, never took anything down - it has always stood as a reminder of where I came from that I'll recall and revisit maybe once a year. While the early days of the gallery are full of awful spontaneous shooting, the mid and latter portions are full of images that, frankly, I miss. Old as they are, some of them feel so amazingly good to see I just want to open them back up in Photoshop, apply the new touch I've developed over the years and post them to Flickr as if they were shot yesterday.

There are a lot of images I've relegated to the past. Strong images that I still love to this day, but due to their age I'm reluctant to revisit them. I'm not sure why entirely, but to a degree I somehow feel it is "cheating" to go back to images taken by my younger past self and apply the new knowledge I've accrued to them. Sort of like that old "Go back in time to complete elementary school with what you know now at 24" scenario. Not that the post-process necessarily makes the image, but I wonder if my fondness of those images is more the curiosity of what I could do with them now as opposed to what I was able to do with them then.

I may yet exercise that revisiting option, however - lately the weather has been crappy and my muse rather elusive. Exploring the potential of old images might do wonders for rekindling my creative centers. The process involved with claiming studio space combined with lining up models to shoot has been a bit draining. Playing with inconsequential images could be just the fun I need to loosen back up. If nothing else, it will certainly be nice to see just exactly how far I've come along since my 1 megapixel Kodak days.