“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
I have no idea how many images I have taken over the the years but there are over 3500 images in the media library on this blog and the vast majority of those are images I have taken a good few hundred spread across my computer and phone that have yet to be published. Not to mention all the non self portrait images I have taken and posted on my 365 Project. That project is currently on hiatus but there are another 3000 images on there and again, those are just the ones I have posted there are many more that have never been shared so I am guessing I am way over the 10,000 mark in total.
When I was looking through my file of edited but not as yet shared images this three shots caught my eye. They were all taken on the same day back in January 2014. 10 years ago!
I actually couldn’t believe it for a moment. It feels like yesterday but also a lifetime ago and was a month before the very first ever FebPhotoFest that took place. They were also the first in a few shoots I did outdoors that featured socks. You see some of the others in these posts
So these image are really some of my earliest outdoor self portraits. I suspect I have definitely taken 10,000 images between then and now and whilst I can look at them and see without a doubt that my photography has improved and more importantly evolved and changed over the years I can also see that even back then I had an eye for both a great location and a the composition of an image. My technical photography skills might have still been a bit raw but the rest was already there, just wanting to be let lose.
It seems fitting to share these image 10 years on. I did post one from this series back in 2014 but since then the rest has sat in my ‘to upload’ file ever since. That seems a share. They deserve their turn and I oddly I think I am prouder of these shots today, looking back on them now and seeing the beginning of the photographer I would become, than I was of them at the time.
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