(Olympus Stylus 1000. 22mm, 1/40 at f4.7, ISO 200. 22 October 2007. Cropped, recomposed, and slightly adjusted from the original.)
It is late and I am looking through some of my earliest photographs. The ones I made with my first camera, a weather resistant point-and-shoot digital camera made by Olympus. Most of them are blurry or dark or strangely colored. I see some early attempts at art and some obvious experimentation. Slowly the impression is growing on me that I was documenting then just as I do today. Then I see this image and it hits me hard. My twelve-years-younger self was making the same photos that I make today. The image quality and framing was less perfect, but the me of today is in this photograph. It is as though I had sent myself a postcard of my life past to twelve years into the future to be reminded that the person and photographer I am today was formed from the one who lived then.