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I have come to a big turn in my photography life. I am moving away form the ‘how it’s always been’ to ‘try something different.’ No, it’s not anything you, my kind readers, are going to ever notice but it is still significant. I have started the process of casting out the old and unneeded and replacing it with the shiny and new and unneeded.

Afters years of procrastination I have begun the final steps of getting rid of the first 20 years of my professional career- I am throwing out my old slides and anything slide related. While this probably doesn’t seem like much to you in fact it is a big job. My dear, crusty, late mother in-law used to compare getting rid of piles of unused junk to ‘having a major bowel movement’ and I fully understand and agree with her. The feeling of relief is wonderful and cathartic.

I have something close to 100,000+ slides in files in my office. Many are duplicates of 8 or more (I needed multiple originals to send out to magazines and calendars, etc.) but still they take up space. I haven’t pawed through my slides in at least 8 years, not since the first time I collected 1000 images and sent them off to be scanned. All the images I am using now I am shooting now. And even if I wanted to try to submit and sell an image on a slide no magazine or calendar would know what to do with it. It is fully a digital world. The slides must go.

I’ll go through each page scanning for an image I might want to keep and scan but otherwise the sound you will be hearing is the metallic thunk of pages and pages and pages of slides hitting the trash can. At least the pages and slides are recyclable now.

It’s not only slides though. I have boxes of labels, empty pages, slide boxes, mounts and protective sleeves that I thrown out. I also tossed 10 perfectly good slide trays- remember the thing we used to fill with slides and put on top of a slide projector? All into the recycling bin. I still have two slide projectors (anybody want them? Free to the first to ask! I’ll even pay for shipping!) and telephoto projection lenses that are too expensive to toss but too old and out dated to use.

It does feel good I must admit. It’s fun to look through all the old slides and save the occasional image although there are lots of really mediocre slides I kept that poorly reflect on my artistic abilities. I must’ve taken enough good ones to make up for the dull ones I kept. Somehow I lasted 30 years (and counting!) in the business.