Like many a photographer, I have a lot of pictures that I haven't used for one reason or another, that are perfectly good photographs. Some of them are just very similar to one another, and I didn't see the point in using a bunch of photos that looked the same. And occasionally, I will take a photo that is more personal than professional, and those get edited and shown to my family and friends and put away.
But I can share them here. Some of them might even go up for sale from time to time, but this is mostly sharing. I call it "The Slush Pile", which is a writing term. It's not exactly perfect analogy, because a slush pile is usually unsolicited work, but I had in mind the measure of vastness. Agents, editors and other publishing professionals never see the bottom of their slush pile, because new work is always coming in. My photography feels like that. Whenever I shoot, the roll always has shots that aren't used for one reason or another.
If you'll forgive me the slight misnomer, I'd like to introduce "From the Slush Pile" as a way to share my old pictures with you.
This one doesn't have a name, but it's of the mist over Lake George in the morning last October. I woke up fairly early and went outside to be confronted with an overwhelming amount of things to photograph. We'd driven up to Lake George the day before in heavy, blinding rain that lasted through the night. But in the morning, it was gone and it was beautiful, glorious autumn. The colors were rain-slicked and brighter, the mist was rising from the lake, the sun was a gorgeous beam of light from a cloudless sky. It was a beautiful morning, and I took as many photos as I could, because even though I grew up in the Great Lakes Region, I have never seen mist rising off a lake before.
Eventually, it went away, dissipating into the warmth of the day. I did manage to get to another part of the lake to take shots from another vantage before it completely faded out. It was such a wonderful sight - a great way to start off a trip!
