I found them in the back of a closet this spring: multiple slide trays and sleeve of slides, a couple thousand Kodachromes and Fujichromes, most of them shot in the '90s and never printed. Landscapes from road trips I'd half forgotten, wildlife frames from before I knew what I was doing, a few airshow pans that were ambitious at best.

So I started scanning. And then re-editing. And somewhere around slide forty, the project turned into something I didn't expect: a conversation with a younger version of myself about light.

Here's what surprised me. The compositions I was proudest of back then mostly hold up — turns out I had an eye before I had technique. But the exposures are all over the place. Film forgave less than I remembered, and plenty of frames I dismissed as failures just needed the shadow recovery that didn't exist in 1998. Modern editing tools pulled detail out of slides I'd written off entirely.

The bigger surprise was how my taste changed. Twenty-five years ago I chased the dramatic — the most saturated sunset, the closest wildlife frame. Now I keep gravitating toward the quiet ones: flat light on water, an elk half-hidden in timber, the frame with breathing room. I'm not sure the younger me would recognize the edit choices, but I think he'd approve of the patience.

If you shot film, you probably have a version of these trays — a box, a binder, a drawer. Dig them out. You don't need a drum scanner; a decent flatbed or even a careful DSLR copy setup gets you most of the way there. The real equipment upgrade is the twenty-five years between the shutter click and today.Some of my favorites from the re-edits will be making their way into the print shop soon. Turns out the archive was the new work all along.