Why My "Best" Photos Might Be Sitting in an Old Folder

I recently listened to an episode of the LensWork podcast — HT2646, "Your Very Best" — and it stuck with me. If someone asked me to show my best work, I'd probably pull up photos from the last year or two. Not because my older shots were bad. I just don't think about them much anymore.

My Seasonal Photography Rhythm

Every year, I stop photographing when summer arrives. I don't enjoy the heat and humidity, and lately I've been doing more night photography — which means waiting forever for a summer sunset. When autumn comes, I slowly get back into it, usually picking up where I left off with a backlog of potential subjects. I'm constantly experimenting with new ways to photograph them, which is part of why it's so exciting to look at recent work: I get to see whether it matches my expectations, or beats them.

Why My Instagram Photos Are Always a Few Years Old

Longtime readers of this blog know I find a lot of inspiration on Instagram, where I post regularly. But I never post a photo until I've registered it with copyright.gov — and that registration process usually takes at least a year. So by the time an image shows up on my feed, it's often a few years old.

The Unexpected Upside

There's a real benefit to this workflow: I routinely revisit my best work from years past, and by now I'm detached enough from those photos to judge them honestly. To avoid posting near-duplicates, I'll often sit with several final contenders from the same scene and pick just one.

Recently, I was sorting through photos from a snowstorm a few years back, and I realized something surprising — those old photos still hold up remarkably well against my newer work. Back then, I paid close attention to including something in the distance to create depth. I've moved away from that lately, focusing instead on close-up subjects like shop signs. A lot of my recent work has less visual impact than those older storm photos.

Instead of being discouraging, it was the opposite: those old photos gave me fresh inspiration to push my current work further.

Do you revisit your old work, or do you only look forward? I'd love to hear how other photographers handle this in the comments.