The Hard Drive of Forgotten Moments
I keep finding photos I’d forgotten I’d taken. It’s an easy trap to fall into when you get out with the camera quite often, but it’s not a good habit to let your raw files gather electronic dust for too long. On the current external hard drive, brought into use just before Christmas, I have four completely untouched folders from this location alone. Can I remember what I was doing at the time, or what drew me to the composition? No I can’t. Did I remember to take a shot where I held up three fingers to tell me which group of shots to focus stack or bracket later on? Erm, well actually no. Things have become rather slack around here if I say so myself. I thought I’d have a quick look and found this, part of a group of blue hour pastels taken towards the lighthouse in February. I remember a faint pink band in the sky, but not much else. If that sounds blasé, it’s not meant to be. Living in a place like this is a bit like working in a chocolate factory when you’re allowed to overdose on the product.
Looking back, the winter was quite provident from a photographic point of view - it’s just that I get home, download them onto my PC, upload them into one of those clouds, think I’ll have a crack at them in the editing suite the next day, and then promptly forget the entire episode. Sometimes I edit a shot or two, think to myself “I really must share that one,” remember I’m halfway through posting a series of shots from somewhere entirely different, and then it gets lost in the machine somewhere. There must be half a dozen winter images from Cornwall that I really ought to tell you about, but it might be a while. In fact it will probably be summer by the time I do, at which point they’ll be entirely out of context.
I just looked at the previous hard drive as well, still being mined for images from time to time. On it, there are still plenty of completely untouched folders and subfolders, stretching back for almost two years - including a further eight collections from Godrevy that have never seen the light of day. Sometimes I’ll remember, “oh yes, that was the time I went to Wheal Coates and didn’t realise I’d left my tripod at home,” or “that was the trip to Cape Cornwall when I was still coming down from the excitement of our Iceland adventure,” but mostly it’s all a bit hazy after two years. I always struggle with Cape Cornwall. Last June we went to North Wales and I distinctly remember some beautiful sunsets over the Llyn Peninsula and the peaks of Snowdonia breaking through the cloud layer from our lofty campsite. Yet only one image from that van trip has made it into these pages so far. I really need to pull my finger out. Ideally I’d just stop taking pictures for a year and work on whatever I find lurking in all of these forgotten folders, but that’s never going to happen is it? Who am I kidding? Being out there standing on the cliff tops and watching the sea do this stuff is the fun part.
I’d tell you I was going to spend the next six months looking through the archive if I thought it was really going to happen, but already I’m thinking of what the next adventure will be - whether it’s down the road looking at this view or somewhere halfway across Europe. It seems I’ll always be playing catch up. But I should at least look at those shots from Wales. That was a great adventure. At least now I have a laptop that goes in the bag when we disappear over the horizon. I can edit on the hoof so to speak - especially when the alternative is incomprehensible Spanish or Greek TV channels with ten minute advert breaks.
But at least I found this one before it was too late to share. A winter pastel moment among the forgotten depths of the archive. And if that doesn’t tell me I need to have a proper trawl through the back catalogue, I really don’t know what will.
The Hard Drive of Forgotten Moments
I keep finding photos I’d forgotten I’d taken. It’s an easy trap to fall into when you get out with the camera quite often, but it’s not a good habit to let your raw files gather electronic dust for too long. On the current external hard drive, brought into use just before Christmas, I have four completely untouched folders from this location alone. Can I remember what I was doing at the time, or what drew me to the composition? No I can’t. Did I remember to take a shot where I held up three fingers to tell me which group of shots to focus stack or bracket later on? Erm, well actually no. Things have become rather slack around here if I say so myself. I thought I’d have a quick look and found this, part of a group of blue hour pastels taken towards the lighthouse in February. I remember a faint pink band in the sky, but not much else. If that sounds blasé, it’s not meant to be. Living in a place like this is a bit like working in a chocolate factory when you’re allowed to overdose on the product.
Looking back, the winter was quite provident from a photographic point of view - it’s just that I get home, download them onto my PC, upload them into one of those clouds, think I’ll have a crack at them in the editing suite the next day, and then promptly forget the entire episode. Sometimes I edit a shot or two, think to myself “I really must share that one,” remember I’m halfway through posting a series of shots from somewhere entirely different, and then it gets lost in the machine somewhere. There must be half a dozen winter images from Cornwall that I really ought to tell you about, but it might be a while. In fact it will probably be summer by the time I do, at which point they’ll be entirely out of context.
I just looked at the previous hard drive as well, still being mined for images from time to time. On it, there are still plenty of completely untouched folders and subfolders, stretching back for almost two years - including a further eight collections from Godrevy that have never seen the light of day. Sometimes I’ll remember, “oh yes, that was the time I went to Wheal Coates and didn’t realise I’d left my tripod at home,” or “that was the trip to Cape Cornwall when I was still coming down from the excitement of our Iceland adventure,” but mostly it’s all a bit hazy after two years. I always struggle with Cape Cornwall. Last June we went to North Wales and I distinctly remember some beautiful sunsets over the Llyn Peninsula and the peaks of Snowdonia breaking through the cloud layer from our lofty campsite. Yet only one image from that van trip has made it into these pages so far. I really need to pull my finger out. Ideally I’d just stop taking pictures for a year and work on whatever I find lurking in all of these forgotten folders, but that’s never going to happen is it? Who am I kidding? Being out there standing on the cliff tops and watching the sea do this stuff is the fun part.
I’d tell you I was going to spend the next six months looking through the archive if I thought it was really going to happen, but already I’m thinking of what the next adventure will be - whether it’s down the road looking at this view or somewhere halfway across Europe. It seems I’ll always be playing catch up. But I should at least look at those shots from Wales. That was a great adventure. At least now I have a laptop that goes in the bag when we disappear over the horizon. I can edit on the hoof so to speak - especially when the alternative is incomprehensible Spanish or Greek TV channels with ten minute advert breaks.
But at least I found this one before it was too late to share. A winter pastel moment among the forgotten depths of the archive. And if that doesn’t tell me I need to have a proper trawl through the back catalogue, I really don’t know what will.