You may remember me starting the process of getting my photos together into 1 catalog a few years ago. I’m very happy to report that as of this summer, I have now (finally…) completed that task. The last and most frustrating phase of the project came when it was time to add my phone photos into the mix. I had them in various places – some on my old desktop, some I had tried to import into my regular Lightroom workflow – but as a separate catalog – and some were stored on Amazon photos since I got free storage with my Prime membership. The process wasn’t difficult, it was just time consuming, but now that it’s all complete, I can use Lightroom to my advantage to gather, sort and make all kinds of collections – even going back and re-editing images that I took before I had access to the tools that I do now.

One thing I thought might be interesting from a sorting perspective, was to look back at one day of the year, for multiple years and see what I might find. I asked Google to give me a random day of the year and October 23rd was what it spit out. Despite digital photos showing from 2001, my catalog really begins around 2004 when I got my very first digital SLR camera. I learned how to search by multiple filters in Lightroom (thanks, AI) and decided to expand a day ahead and day after to get a narrowed down set of images.

I was shocked to see that I took photos on one of those days every year except 2006 and 2009! I have exported the first 10 years worth of photos to add to the post. Perhaps I’ll have to do a Part II for my next post. 🙂

2004

I had just started a photography class at night after work and our assignment was to capture the idea of motion. It was fall and just outside of Chicago the trees were changing color and losing their leaves. I remember standing under this massive tree as the wind picked up and pointing my camera up at the branches as the limbs swayed and the leaves began to drop.

2007

I honestly can’t remember where this is from. I’m guessing possibly from a work trip when I was still in the natural gas trading business?

2008

My son, Braden, riding his tricycle on our driveway after we had moved to Houston, TX. (He’s in college now…)

2010

Another mysterious image. Where was I going? Who did I visit?

2011

One of my very first selfies. I remember that I had just gotten back from the Shutter Sisters first retreat and I was inspired to put myself into my images.

2012

Speaking of Shutter Sisters – this one came from the 2nd retreat. Lensbaby had lenses that we could check out for a few hours and play around with. I had never used anything like it and simultaneously flummoxed and fascinated with how it worked.

2013

This one was from my Jar of Inspiration project where I spent each month taking daily photos on 1 specific topic. This month was to use my camera only in apertures of Fll and higher. You can always tell when the lights turn into those starbursts…

2014

A baby squirrel fell from it’s nest in one the trees by our house and our neighbor befriended it and took care of it until it could go off on it’s own.

2015

This was the year that I stepped waaaaay out of my comfort zone and started doing freelance photography for the yoga studio I had been attending. This whole experience was wonderful and lead me down a life-changing path. I’m not sure I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t taken the leap to ask if they would be interested in trading photography work for a membership.

2016

Scouting locations for photo shoots so that I always had plenty of options available when clients asked was a regular occurrence during this time period. (And yes, sometimes I took my piano bench along…)

I haven’t gone past 2016 in my looking at photos, but I’m wondering if I’ll have as many options for the next 10 years of pictures? I predict that I’ll be finding more and more phone photos the closer to real-time I get. Maybe that’s a good incentive to start picking up my big camera more.

I’d love to know what October 23 might look like for you, too! You can always tag me on Instagram (and @viewfinders_io) if you want to share.

Looking back – Angie