Culling last year's photos...

Has anyone, pro or hobbyist recently culled their photos and said wow!?!'

On Monday I made the swap to an additional external hard drive for archiving.
In the preparation process I re-batch all of my photo from January 2013- April 2014

My first impression was wow, I took a lot of terrible photos, either missed focus or slow shutter speed.
I am not a paid professional, and began DSLR with a 650D (T4i) in the summer of 2012.
What I once thought were good photos now look bad, in framing or composition.

But I am extremely happy with the progress I have made and the skill I have obtained.
I also learned a lot. I know what I like to shoot, and what I am not interested in.
I know more about shooting in harsh conditions, and how to better post-process my images.

What about you?

Same here. I started in 2010 with a T1i and when I go through my files, I find a lot of things which were, on my opinion at the time great images. Now as I look back they scream noob. It's a great way to gauge my improvement. It is said you need to take 10,000 images before you really understand what you're doing. Not sure I agree with that but I've hit that mark a while ago and I do see and understand what I'm doing better.

InfiniteDivide wrote in post #16935058
My first impression was wow, I took a lot of terrible photos, either missed focus or slow shutter speed.

I fairly frequently go back through my old pictures. I have found that my eye and pp skills have improved to the point where I can see some good photos where before I couldn't. Of course I have also found that I took some wonderfully awful shots. Close up of a fire hydrant that needed narrow DoF taken at f/16 with shutter speed far to low

I cull most of my duff shots but I keep a few just to remind me to pay attention.

Taking photos isn't really useful. Studying photos however is what matters. I shoot sports and can take about 1000 an hour if the players are being really aggressive with lots of contact, but simply taking them really doesn't help me learn anything. The photos I take at the first of the game aren't any better or worse than the ones from the last of the game.

When you are actually taking a photo I feel that you are either doing something that you already have done and know how it works, or you are exploring/experimentin​g. Where I learn is when I get things into lightroom and start my aggressive culling while really studying what is in the images I produced.

Did I generate any photos I'm willing to accept using this slow of a shutter speed with this long slow telephoto and OS on? If I did generate any, how many was I able to capture that worked well vs how many have too much motion blur? Will this amount of work be worth the effort in the future, compared to what I can do with other lenses/methods?

Ask questions of yourself, challenge yourself to create something different/better than you did before. And also going back to review what you've done in the past is a very useful tool for self learning. I am aggressive at culling out things with technical faults as I process my incoming stuff now, but I'm planning to hang on to everything that I thought was "Good at the time" so I can look back at it in the future.

InfiniteDivide wrote in post #16935058
Has anyone, pro or hobbyist recently culled their photos and said wow!?!'

I cull photos on a continual basis. Some time is spent culling during three or four days every week.

I don't say, "Wow!?!", because the culling doesn't surprise me. I pretty much try to get around 75% to 85% of my images culled out. If I keep any more than 15% to 25%, it makes file management and organization tougher to deal with.

Perhaps Wow! is not the right word. But the feeling is of accomplishment.
What I thought were great photos at the time are 'so so' now and 'ok' photos look terrible now.
Therefore what I currently think are great photos now will only be 'ok' photos in a year.
It's good to see my own self progression in my hobby.

InfiniteDivide wrote in post #16935058
What I once thought were good photos now look bad, in framing or composition.

yes, I can also see the shooting inexperience in my old photos