Yesterday Amy and I spent some time going through all of the weddings and portrait sessions I’ve done over the last year. The purpose is to get some new display prints in my office. Freshen things up a bit. Springtime. Newness. All of that, see. And it was so great to go back and see some of my favorite wedding and portrait pictures from the last few months. And it was fun to discover some new favorites that I just hadn’t seen the first time around.
Back when I shot film, I loved busting out the contact sheets from the previous years and seeing if there was an undiscovered gem that I hadn’t found before. Like a little treasure hunt. You go back with fresh eyes, and maybe the emotion you felt when taking the pictures has faded a little, so you’re looking at the images with a new perspective.
One of my favorite photographers, Gary Winnogrand, used to wait a full year before he developed his film for this very reason. He would shoot the film and set it aside for one year before he even developed it! I could never do that. I’m too impatient. But for him, looking at them too soon clouded his ability to select the strongest images based on the image itself, not on how he felt at the time he made the picture.
So for me, what I’ve discovered, is that some of the pictures I respond to initially are the same pictures I respond to a year later. And yet, there are some surprises when you find a really great picture that you really didn’t notice the first time around. And I like that feeling. Like when you find a 20 dollar bill in some pants you haven’t worn in a month.
So, if you care to spend five minutes, this slideshow is a portfolio of my images from the past year that I find compelling. (There might be a handful that fall outside that one year range). Enjoy.
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Justin Hackworth photographs happy people and beautiful events and he wants to photograph you.
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