One of the more difficult things I've had to deal with when I decided to take photography seriously, is the concept of disassociating myself from the photos I take. Conceptually it didn't make a whole lot of sense when people told me to do it, but along the way I've realized why it is such an important thing.
Today I took a chainsaw out and ripped through my Flickr account. When I began, I was slightly over 1000 photos... when I finished, I was down to just under 500. That's right, I laid-waste to over 500 photos. Granted, some of the photos I axed were for school projects and were no longer necessary, and of course there were a few duplicates. However, much of the task had to do with re-evaluating my photos. Those things that were near-and-dear enough to my heart to make the trip up to Flickr once upon a time. Because, I [personally] don't treat Flickr as my photo album... I treat it as my photo display case. Granted, I know not all the images in my Flickr account are fantastic, but they all have something about them that caused my eyes and brain (at the time they were posted) to deem them as worthy.
One of the most fascinating things about photography (for me) is witnessing progression. Progression takes many forms in photography (and other places in life too). For me, it is sometimes made apparent by running across a photo opportunity I've had before, and shot before, and deciding to no longer shoot it again. Progression... deciding that certain shots have run their course, and that sometimes there was never really a shot there at all... I just couldn't see.
I honestly didn't expect that my delete count was going to be as high as it was. But at the same time I was very proud of what I had done. Even though it wasn't exactly easy, there was a time when I couldn't do it at all... so today I felt like I had progressed... significantly.
