That's a bad picture. There are many things wrong with it - the composition, the focus, the perspective. But there's also one big right thing about it - it was an attempt. You'll never get a good photo if you don't pick up the camera and shoot.

It's one of the earliest digital photos that I have in my storage drive from a shoe-string trip my wife (then girlfriend) took to Ecuador in 2006. I don't really know what I intended to do with the photo - I think I was intrigued by the way the dew played off the colorful flower petals balanced by a strong green background. But I would approach this very differently today were I back in the same scene.

And that's what this post is about - the value of looking at your bad stuff and why you shouldn't get rid of it.

The bad photos are helpful because they show what you were interested in but where you missed artistically. They show the moods you were trying to convey, the things that drew your eye, but maybe you failed to pull into a coherent and strong story.

The photo above is a lot stronger, but still misses on some important marks. Perhaps most important, it pulls out emotion and tells a story. The letters on the bench hint at a welcoming area or port and the seals taking their nap hint at the whole oddity of the islands. It's "cute", but it also draws out a laugh, a smile, a hint of curiosity, and feeling of playfulness and serenity of nature mixed with people.

But again the composition is weak. The seal's face is cut off and when their connection is one of the most important parts of the scene, that's a big miss. Everything is super centered which requires the viewer to use a lot of energy to move eyes to the edges.

Good colors and a feeling of peace? Sure. Everything else about it is crap. But I know I'm drawn to sunsets (so original, right?) and being at sea so I'm continuing to explore ways to explore that scene with greater creativity and technical skill.

If you take the time to back-up and store your images in a way that's easy to retrieve them (think cloud services), I strongly recommend you spend some time in your archives and look for the bad stuff. It's so valuable as a learning tool.