Recently I’ve been going through old photos dating back to around 2005, when I first got my hands consistently on a digital camera. It’s revealed a few gems to me, photos I had no thought to process at the time but now am delighted in finding and processing. I’ve also been re-processing a few images, as my first forays into Photoshop resulted in a few thermonuclear photographs. Nine years on, it’s a lot of fun to see how I’ve progressed in both the way I shoot and the way I process.

This post, however, came to me when I found the picture directly below – a New Zealand North Island Robin photographed in 2009 on Tirirtiri Matangi, a haven for native birdlife just off the coast of Auckland. It made me think of the photo I captured earlier this year while in England, of a distant cousin. Out of the two images I prefer the older one, although at the time of taking I thought very little of it and have only come to processing it now. The newer I was elated in capturing, and it was one of the first images I processed once I’d come home. Our Robins are much rarer than their European counterparts. I used to be very haphazard in my photography, now I am gaining focus and setting goals for myself. The thing I most enjoy is learning, which is why I’ve liked taking a look back to where I began to see how far I have come, and how far I have yet to go.