That ONE picture that made it all worthwhile for YOU

I was heavily into photography for many years from late seventies onwards, had all the lenses etc for my Olympus ME Super and took thousands of pictures, saved the day for at least two family members when the wedding photographers pics didn’t turn out as expected, one even forgot to put film in his camera.
When everything went mainly digital, I kept promising myself I would get a decent SLR, just couldn’t decide which one and if I could be bothered to relearn the fundamentals of digital photography so didn’t. Of the 15000 or more photos I have on my phone there may be about 100 or so that I would print. I agree with Jim a photo isn’t a photo until you print it, and I used to love waiting to get my pics back from Max Speilman hoping to have that ONE draw dropping image that would make my passion worthwhile, but do I really want another 10 plastic boxes full of pictures to be looked at every 5 years, with no particular interest shown by anyone else, not really. Apart from being a bit limiting with settings, lack of lenses no aperture control etc most of the pictures I take on my phone are just as good as when I was using my camera, apart from that ONE picture that made it all worthwhile for me, I’d show it to you but it’s in a box somewhere, but I will find it promise.

So, some of you will have many no doubt, but what is the one picture you went WOW when you printed in, let’s see it with a few details of what, where, when, camera/ phone lense etc maybe we can make a Fun calendar with the 12 best and give the proceeds to charity if we sell any and that’s ok’d by
Jim
Come on post your pic

Great input, thanks for sharing, very interesting and I enjoyed your views.

Have you checked out creating your own albums, to show your photos, rather than single posts.

The site is a bit clunky ..
#Navigate > Media > Create album ( top right )

Time ago like you, I had accumulated in the loft unseen, a box full of my photos mixed in with our inherited family photos.

I now have the vast majority digitised up on cloud so they are instantly available to show or explore on my phone screen. I think mobiles/ tablets are a great way to showcase your photos.

They sat in the loft unseen and deteriorating. Lots of sellotape staining, creases, fading marks and missing bits.

So I set about restoring them, a mammoth task, I even found a forensic color filter to bring out lost detail in mother& twin .. 3" x 3" faded photo.

I have created an album PictuRepair (before and afters) to show you a few.
Enjoy

I did try digitising many pics and bought a negative scanner about 5 years ago, after about 100 pics got a bit bored, it’s the cataloging that takes the time. I have decided the next time I want to delve into the archive I will bin all of the scenery pics, as no one will have any idea what they are of (including me) hopefully, with the further advent of AI I will get an easy seamless way of digitising them all. Or does that already exist? Trying to put my existing digitised photos into albums is taking long enough, only about 13500 or so to go!! Any ideas?

Wow .. well impressed, 13,500 that is lots.

My own digitisation doesn't come any where near that volume, it is still an ongoing project.

My suggestion would be to cherrypick and scan them "as is", but rename them with meaningful names.(you can batch rename)

So that cataloging is not necessary

e.g. NOT . . "DSC10034"
but . ."David_ bbq_2016"

A keyword search will identify photos of the same theme.

Store them on free cloud storage, list the photos you've scanned and their location.

Bit by bit as you can .. I've resolved that I may never finish them all, but at least the best & favourites will be preserved.

Modern and recent have been stored immediately by cherrypicking and only saving what I think are keepers.

Sorry I can not be more helpful, but you are going to have to be more selective .. as you already have decided with the scenery.

That should read as 13500 digital uncatalogued photos, I have not digitised 13500 pictures more like 1-200 and that took long enough, I find it easier just to take a picture of any old photos that take my fancy, you are right, cherrypicking is the answer but it’s never immediate with me so I’d have to start from the beginning of going digital.