Rediscovering digital treasures lurking in store

[wda]

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Every new year, I spend a little time reviewing older digital images in my collection. It is amazing what I discover. This year I set myself a target to revisit all pictures taken with my oldest Leica digital camera. There were several thousands, (pictures, not Leica cameras), many of which preceded my later acquired digital asset management (or ‘DAM’) skills. So I decided to concentrate on them, starting with the ‘Unflagged‘ pictures. The result was a short article which has recently been published on The Leica Fellowship website. The article has stimulated interest among members, prompting a few to delve into their own collections to see what they can find. 

Many of my discoveries predate any post-processing skills that I now possess. Pictures that didn't catch my eye twenty years ago suddenly reveal their potential, developing a new life of their own. A lot are very personal in content, evoking nostalgic memories of another age. Historic portraits are personalised for very original birthday greetings in later years. For further insight into my methods, please visit my article here: https://www.leica-fellowship.org.uk/lucky-dip and feel free to leave any comments.

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[stuny]

Delightful.  We all could benefit from doing similarly.

[Archiver]

It can be deeply satisfying and surprising to go through one's early photos. I've found images of someone I later went out with, but didn't know at the time I took the photos. I only shot in jpeg for the first 5-6 years of my digital photography, so unfortunately, I can't heavily reprocess older images, but raw images from then on are fair game.

[Derbyshire Man]

On 1/28/2025 at 5:00 PM, wda said:

Every new year, I spend a little time reviewing older digital images in my collection. It is amazing what I discover. This year I set myself a target to revisit all pictures taken with my oldest Leica digital camera. There were several thousands, (pictures, not Leica cameras), many of which preceded my later acquired digital asset management (or ‘DAM’) skills. So I decided to concentrate on them, starting with the ‘Unflagged‘ pictures. The result was a short article which has recently been published on The Leica Fellowship website. The article has stimulated interest among members, prompting a few to delve into their own collections to see what they can find. 

Many of my discoveries predate any post-processing skills that I now possess. Pictures that didn't catch my eye twenty years ago suddenly reveal their potential, developing a new life of their own. A lot are very personal in content, evoking nostalgic memories of another age. Historic portraits are personalised for very original birthday greetings in later years. For further insight into my methods, please visit my article here: https://www.leica-fellowship.org.uk/lucky-dip and feel free to leave any comments.

Have you explored using Excire to go through your images? 

[wda]

On 4/23/2025 at 6:27 AM, Derbyshire Man said:

Have you explored using Excire to go through your images? 

No. Can you recommend it?

[Derbyshire Man]

4 hours ago, wda said:

No. Can you recommend it?

I've enjoyed it. There's a free trial to see if it works for you. Quite expensive but a good way of searching through images and identifying pictures you've forgotten if not great at scoring & key wording.