Success (at photography) isn't always what we originally planned it to be.
Things you plan to do might not turn out as well as you hoped. Things you thought weren't very well, at first, might turn out to be good later on.
In 1986, I went on a trip to Boston to visit friends at college. I graduated high school the year before and was going to school at a local college. My friends were going to school in Boston. I went there to look at schools and spend time with friends. One friend worked for the school yearbook so we spent the day hanging around the photo lab.
I got a roll of Ilford film from the lab and spent the afternoon going around town, seeing sights and shooting some pictures. I came back, developed the film and, when it was ready, I looked at the results. A few shots were so-so, at best, but the majority were junk... or so I thought. I put the negatives in a Print-File, stuck them in a notebook and promptly forgot about them for 25 years.
A little over a year ago, I was going through my old notebooks and I took a look at those old negatives. On a whim, I scanned a few of them. Two shots that I once though were crap turned out to be pretty good. Back then, I thought they were dark, blurry and out of focus but, looking at them with a fresh eye, I realized that "dark and blurry" is what made the picture.
I just got through printing those two pictures. I plan to enter them in a local art show that starts next month. I took these prints to a local frame shop to have them framed. As it turns out, the owner of the shop is one of the judges for that show. Of course, he can't pre-juge works until they are actually submitted but he did say that he liked them. I could tell that it wasn't just talk. I'm not expecting these photos to win prizes or anything but I've got a good feeling of accomplishment and, with luck, I might get noticed.
Isn't it ironic that pictures I thought were junk, that I might have thrown away, turned out to be worthwhile, more than 25 years later?
I wonder what you will think of some of those pictures that you thought weren't very good or, maybe some of those pictures that you stored away and forgot about, 25 years from now.