Sunset Over Westminster | Weekly Photo #15
When I first took this photo of Westminster from Waterloo Bridge, I absolutely loved it. So much in fact that I created a blog post demonstrating how I post-processed the shot from RAW to the final edit.
Fujifilm XT-10 | XF18-55mm | 23mm | 58 Seconds | f/11 | ISO200
I originally took this photo while on a walk along the River Thames in 2017 as I was trying to recreate an image I once took at night but this time during the golden hour. If I remember correctly, the golden hour came and went without much of a show but once the sun had dropped under the horizon, the sky was illuminated with these pink and magenta colours. It really was quite beautiful.
Back in 2017, I was still using my first (and still favourite) Fujifilm camera, the X-T10. I used a 10-stop Formatt-Hitech filter which gave me the 58-second exposure resulting in the smooth river and spinning motion in the London Eye. With very little wind, the clouds hardly moved during the exposure so there were no long, streaky clouds you can often find in long exposures which I think, in this particular image works rather well.
Why you should revisit your old photos.
Fast-forward nearly 2 1/2 years and I just happened to be browsing through some older images and came across this photo and I was a lot less impressed with how it turned out. So much so, I decided to have another go at editing the image. I’m so glad I did.
I like the way the image has more contrast and instead of the image being almost all magenta, I brought back some of the blue tones in the shadows and yellows/oranges in the sky nearer the sun. Finished with a bit of dodging and burning and a slightly tighter crop than before, I was done.
Going through this process got me thinking about the benefits of revisiting your older photos which I have listed below.
#1 You might find images you once overlooked.
When I first import and process my photos in Lightroom, I search for images that are sharp, well composed and properly exposed. I would normally have an idea as to the image I am looking to capture which means I may overlook other, perfectly good images. Going back and looking again without any agenda means I occasionally find really good images I once overlooked as it didn’t fit my needs first time round.
#2 Your styles and interests may have changed since you took the original photo.
Photographic styles and interests inevitably change over time and photos you once took that didn’t align to your photographic interests at the time or didn’t suit your previous processing style may now be just the kind of images you currently create.
#3 You can take advantage of new processing skills or the latest software tools available.
You may have photos in your library that for reasons of skillset or software limitations, you were never able to get the look you were after. As skills and software improve, you may now be able to process that image the way you wanted.
So, that’s it. I would love to hear if you have any more thoughts on revisiting older photos that I haven’t covered. If so, please leave a comment below.
Until next time.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.