Maybe there’s just next.

If My Next Photo Is My Best… Does That Mean All the Others Were My Worst?

It’s a thought that hit me the other night while sorting through a folder of images. That in comparison to what I shoot now they’re not amazing.

But how else could I have gotten here, to this moment in time?

We talk about improvement in art like it’s a ladder, each rung higher than the last. But what if it’s more like a spiral? You keep circling the same creative truths — light, shadow, emotion, timing — only each time you pass through, you understand them a little better.

Every so-called “bad” photo was simply a version of me learning — framing the world through the limits of who I was then. And that’s something to respect, not reject.

The Myth of the ‘Best’ Photo

“Best” is such a slippery word. Best according to who?

Collectors? Viewers? Me, on three hours’ sleep and two coffees deep into Lightroom?

There’s no universal measurement for art — only connection. And that connection shifts with time. Some of my most technically perfect images leave me cold, while an older shot taken on an iPhone in 2016 can still hit me in the chest like it happened yesterday.

Maybe best isn’t about sharpness or composition at all. Maybe it’s about honesty.

I think about my photography as a trail of seashells — each frame marking where I’ve been. Some shots were rushed, some were miracles. Some tested my patience, others my sanity. (Looking at you, astro sessions with mosquitoes and 4am frost.)

But every one of them taught me something.

How to read light. How to trust instinct. How to breathe when the tripod shakes in a wind gust.

Without other photos, the overexposed, the blurred, the ones I never shared — I’d never have learned the lessons that shape my style today.

As artists we live in a strange state of contradiction.

We chase “better,” yet the moment we reach it, the definition moves again.

We crave growth, but growth demands we outgrow ourselves — and that’s uncomfortable, but also bloody awesome!

So maybe the goal isn’t to take the best photo. Maybe it’s to take the next photo.

So What If…

Maybe there’s no such thing as best or worst.

Maybe there’s just next.