To clear the air: yes, I've been watching a lot of LOST lately and that is what inspired the title.

I've been taking a photo a day for almost a year and a half now (give or take those few days where I messed up) and this has left we with a whole lot of photos on my computer. Currently, I have almost 27,000 photos on my computer from 2013 alone, and I only posted 365 of them to A Dylan A Day. That leaves roughly, let's see how rusty my math is... 26,735 photos that didn't make it to ADAD. Let's say, hypothetically, that I shared another 100 of those on my flickr or twitter or facebook (my instagram is a whole other beast) then we're still at 26,635 photos. Just sitting there collecting dust or something.

Well, why keep them?

We all know the sentimental benefits to keeping photos around -- holding on to a picture to look at it later is kind of its whole purpose. But I think it's safe to say that not all of the 26,635 "other" photos from 2013 hold that sentimental value to me.

I may be nostalgic, but I'm not crazy.

Instead, I find a lot of creative inspiration in looking back at these photos. What's that quote... if you can't learn from the past you're doomed to repeat it, or something. I butchered that, I'm sorry. The point is that I try to live by a mantra taken from that idea. Mine goes a little like this: don't repeat the past, don't forget it either.

I believe there's a lot to learn from my old self, and I intend to do just that. For instance, for me there's a lot involved in process of first taking a photo and preparing it to be shared on my blog. I have to organize the photos, cut out the bad ones, star the good ones, punch them up a bit, cut the good group down over and over again until I have "the one."

Because of this, "Photo Editor Dylan" has evolved just as much through time and experience as "Photographer Dylan." Basically, I don't just take different photos than I used to, I also have different taste in what photos I choose to share. All the pictures below were castoffs from the past that I pulled out when looking back through old sets. I feel like their beauty (whether literal or metaphorical) is a testament to both how I've grown in a way that can now recognize it, but also to how I've tried to keep an open mind to the past.

In the end, this all just goes to show that sometimes we have to go back, Kate.

the others