Let us wander back in time. Two years ago, on 23 November 1999, I got my first digital
camera. It arrived in the mail mere hours before I flew across the
country, leaving New York for what I thought would be a brief holiday
visit to my parents, but which turned out to be a permanent relocation.
Two days later, on 25 November 1999, which also happened to be
Thanksgiving, I took my first digital self-portrait.
Two days after that, which would be exactly two years ago today, I took an
image of myself which still amuses me to this day.
For some people it is music. For others it is smell.
For me, it is little digital images I have scattered throughout this
ever-growing web site. Nothing is more evocative than these pictures.
A flutter in my stomach, a gesture that made me smile,
a moment in time -- all captured.
Real photographs don't do it for me. There are
generally of the world around me and they are generally more "safe". The
freedom of not having to pay for film or developing that came with my digital camera allowed for
experimentation. The only cost was time. And I could format, filter,
crop, etc. I could bring my vision to the image twice -- once when I
framed it through the lens, and again when I brought it up on my screen
before uploading it.
This meandering to old pages has just made me realize
that this month celebrates two years of digital photos in my diary. Two
years without a camera, and then two years with one.
Two years of memories that cannot be roused from my
mind unless I look at the right image...
