Over the years I’ve done a remarkably poor job cataloguing my photos. I have folders named by date, subject, location, occasion, and the ever mysterious “To Be Sorted.”

The collection has been exported and imported…well, who knows how many times, and what variety of photo management software (or whatever substituted for management software at the time). Google’s Picasa, I remember. Then Apple Photos, and now Lightroom CC.

Lightroom CC is about as complicated a piece of software as I can handle. I think it’s nothing short of magic, which to an experienced photo finisher, is probably nothing short of adorable. I’m fascinated by how much better my photos look after just a few simple tweaks in LR.

BUT–my photo finishing skills will wait for another day. Posts for the next few days are the result of a recent discovery I made of a handy feature of LR–a decent metadata cataloguing tool. Fascinating trip down memory lane for me–maaaaybe not so fascinating for you. But…it’s my dime. 🙂

As of this writing, I have 8,525 photos in my library. Some are scans of old prints (from FILM cameras! Oooooooo…). I would have an exponentially larger sum of photos, perhaps up to 3-4 times as many, but I don’t save everything I shoot, particularly for the last 3 years or so. I’ve become considerably more critical, and dump a lot.

While I didn’t really get “into” photography until 2003 (“Say….isn’t that 13 years ago?”), the oldest photo in my library dates back to…January of 1601. Given my relative certainty that the digital cameras of 1601 did not always capture metadata with a high degree of accuracy, I’ll assume that that is an error.

The second oldest photos are a 38-image set of my June 2001 trip to Israel, apparently taken on a long forgotten “Cybershot” camera. This is a bit of a “Frankenstein’s monster” mashup of metadata, though. True enough, the dates and time match the trip. But….I have several dozen prints of photos (from a FILM camera! Oooooooo…) that align with my memory of packing rolls of film (and, align with my lack-of-memory of owning a digital “Cybershot” camera). So…mystery.

2003 was the year of my first expensive (in 2003) camera, a gift* from Donna, who researched and comparison shopped for a week–then spent a boatload of cash ($350) on a guy she hadn’t even married yet, fer cryin’ out loud–to get: a Kodak EasyShare DX4330. 3.1MP! 3X Optical Zoom! 3.3X Digital Zoom! LCD Display! 16 can-you-even-believe-it MB of internal memory! (It’s funny because 2016, amiright?) If memory serves (well…if Lightroom is correct), the picture of Slash (with frickin’ laser beams shooting out his eyes) at the top of this post is the first shot with the new Kodak…note the yellow Kodak box on the table in the background? No? Okay.

Here is the second picture taken with that camera–Charlie (with frickin’ laser beams shooting out his eyes), same table, same Kodak box.

in 2005, Donna upgraded me to a Kodak EasyShare C300. Released in February, gifted to me in May**, used for graduations (Roxanne and Joe), birthdays (Donna and Mike), left in a taxi in Las Vegas in July. Ah, good times.

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That’s enough for now…I’m at 600 words and apparently picked a bad day to have a decent bedtime. Join me again tomorrow for “13 and Counting – Part II” and let me know if you ever found a camera in a taxi in Vegas, okay?

 

* Honey, why did you buy me a camera in March 2003? Late Christmas present? early wedding present?

**Seriously honey, what is with the weird dates for gifts?