One of the great joys (there are many, even if we remove those that aren't good for one's health in old age) is one has ample free time to rethink, replan, revisit and redo a great variety of things, many of them photographic.
In my case, I find I'm less interested in making field trips to shoot - especially so as I realise I would be revisiting almost all the places I went to in the past and, essentially, reshooting most of what I saw and photographed then. Deja vu. Wasted time, in many cases. So I dither and delay and obfuscate, well knowing I will probably never get around to it. Too many new places to go to and shoot fresh.
On the other hand, darkroom time has become far more interesting. I have tens of thousands of old negatives and slides to look through, sort, caption, keyword and generally make improved prints from those I made in the 1980s and 1990s when I tended to print more hurriedly, and consequently took less time to evaluate and fine-tune the contrast in my prints.
Much like Juan (see #3), I too am making interesting discoveries as I pore thru old archival negative files and slide boxes.
In the 1990s I got interested in architectural photography and changed my entire way of shooting. An interesting discovery in looking at my older images (I began shooting as a teenager in the early '60s and have somehow miraculously kept all my negatives, which I nowadays fondly refer to as "my photographic archives") is that I was at the forefront of a revival in Eastern Canada of the Old Pictorial Style, altho I didn't realise this at the time. Even way back then I had an interest in architecture and buildings and am finding I was already documenting and recording many structures, mostly old French Canadian barns and late 1800s examples of the 'Horrible Gothic' styles so beloved of British Imperialists, to mention but two, almost all of which have now vanished into oblivion. So the foundations of my later becoming a design architect had been awakened even decades before. An interesting revelation for me.
A special "find" was two negative sleeves of black-and-white images taken in 1963 of my late grandfather, who passed away in 1993 at age 100, and my favorite cousin, who was then 19 (he is now 73), making maple syrup at the old "sugar shack" on the family farm. Many memories of my early teen years (I was 15 at the time ,I had a Yashica D TLR and a cheap Sekonic exposure meter, and I shot Kodak Verichrome Pan, if anyone cares to know the "technicals") came flooding back as I took out the negatives, still in almost perfect condition, and perused them on my light table. At that long ago time in my life I was a correspondent for two provincial daily newspapers and I had plans to write a feature article on maple syrup production on small farms in New Brunswick (Canada), of course illustrated with the images I took, but several of my aunts took exception to this plan and caused such an uproar that my parents demanded I not publish the shots. Irritated by this, I announced to the family that no-one would ever see those images. No-one ever has. Now, half a century land four years ater, I still have the original negatives, and I intend to print them and mount them in small books for family members to enjoy. Unfortunately, my grandfather, my mother and all the trouble making aunts will never see them, as they have all passed on. Now I regret all that, but I have the consolation of knowing the "wheel" has now turned its full circle, and I will finally be able to right my bad decision and move on. A small event, but significant. Such is life.
The Velveeta landscapes I was so happily shooting even back in 1962, are all being set aside in a special folder, for future perusal and... well, I'm not sure what. But I do intend to keep them, as cheesy as they were.
I look on my retirement years as a time for reviewing and learning, and am finding much to ponder in my old images. One goal is to see if Pictorial evolved into Architectural. Also, I hope, to find uses for them.
Many new discoveries. Old dogs. New tricks.
