“What Was I Thinking?” — A Love Letter to My Early Edits

(aka The Crimes Against Photography I Used to Call Art)

We’ve all been there. Digging through old files, maybe cleaning up your Lightroom catalog (or pretending to), and then — BAM — one of your early edits jumps out at you like a jump scare from a low-budget horror movie.

“What… was I thinking?”

The white balance is all over the place — somewhere between hospital hallway and radioactive sunrise. The composition? Cropped right through the ankle, or maybe I thought people just didn’t need heads back then. And the horizon? Tilted like I was standing on the deck of the Titanic mid-sink.

Let’s not even talk about the editing. Overexposed, underexposed — sometimes in the same photo. Skin tones that look like Oompa Loompa cosplay, shadows crushed into oblivion, and don’t even get me started on the clarity slider abuse. If you didn’t ruin at least 400 photos trying to “make it pop,” did you even start from the bottom?

But here’s the kicker — at the time, I was proud of those edits. I showed them off. I posted them. I probably said something like “nailed it” in the caption. And I meant it.

And honestly? That’s kind of beautiful.

Because growth looks like this: Looking back at where you started and cringing… because you’ve gotten better. If I still loved my earliest work, I’d be worried. But I’ve learned. I’ve grown. I’ve practiced. I’ve failed a lot — and that’s exactly how this whole thing is supposed to go.

You don’t measure success by how flawless your first shots were. You measure it by how far you’ve come since then.

So to my early edits: Thanks for teaching me what not to do.
To my current edits: You’re not perfect either — but we’re getting there.
And to anyone just starting: You’ll look back and laugh too. That’s how you know it’s working.