Been researching nostalgia for an article I’m working on.
Not sure I like nostalgia. It can be used to distort truths, to ignore the truths of a time once idealized.
Photographers have a problem with nostalgia just as I do with this photo. I want to work this photo location more. I want to move a little to my right to change the composition. I want different clouds. I want a different pose. Different lenses. Different clothing. More people.
I’ll never get the chance. Soon after I made this photo the farm field in the background was sold to a developer and now a two-story tall house stands as the background.
While the past shapes me, it is what I do with the present moment that defines my photography. I can’t linger there, in the past, navigating through memories and failures.
Today is the day I become an expert in the day. Today is the day I acknowledge the beauty of the past without losing myself in it. Today I honor the memories that shaped me without allowing nostalgia to cloud efforts.
Today I move on.
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This is an Amazon link where I make a few pennies to help pay for my life. Today’s book is The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.
Almost everything I shoot goes through Luminar Neo. Even after I’ve made the first edit of my raw file in Adobe Camera Raw. I’ve built my own set of Luminar presets for the places and things I normally shoot and for different lighting conditions at those places. Then it’s easy to adjust the results for fine-tuning each photo. This is an affiliate link so I might make a little something from sale. Download it for the trial period.