Every now and then I get the urge to delve back into my photo archives. It’s a rewarding exercise because it does a few things:

• I appreciate my past wins – the great photos that I love
• I learn from old mistakes
• I find things I want to try again, differently
• I find hidden gems that I somehow missed during the first processing round

I try not to get too caught up in looking backwards, but there’s a lot to learn from our photographic past. It’s always worthwhile looking at what we’ve done, even if only to see how far we’ve come! Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by the sheer number of photographs that I’ve taken that many fall through the cracks, and it’s only years later that I discover some of my favourite photographs.

I did this recently with my subantarctic islands photos from 2015/2016. I was extremely fortunate to have scholarship and internship trips with Heritage Expeditions, and visited all of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands: The Snares, Auckland Islands, Campbell Island, Bounty Islands, Antipodes Island (plus the Chatham Islands, and Macquarie Island – which is Australian). So here’s a few that slipped between the cracks, with lessons learned, and many fond memories of adventures on the south seas.