With the sheer volume of media I produce, I have to offload files on a regular basis for the purposes of backup. Between the podcasts and photos, I’ve probably already consumed several terabytes in the past year alone, far exceeding the measly 1 TB allowance of my 2009 iMac.
Today, I had to offload some large files that could only be copied onto an NTFS hard drive. So I dug an old Western Digital MyBook out of my closet and tried to move the files on. In doing so, I discovered some old photos that I’d taken, but never uploaded onto Flickr:
The above is the first photoset that I ever put together. It was my final project for my Introductory Photography class in college. These photographs were taken at a UMass-Amherst fraternity over 7 years ago. They were taken with a film camera (Canon Rebel) on Kodak Tri-X black and white film, developed and printed by yours truly, then scanned into a computer in JPG form. I remember physically printing these photos out by hand in a dark room with all those delicious chemicals. Ahh, the good ol’ days.
It’s fascinating for me to look back into the past like this. Not only do the photos represent people who have undoubtedly moved on in their lives, but they also reveal my own technical and compositional limitations at the time. I’d like to think I’ve grown as a photographer, but I still think a few of these shots are pretty awesome.