As 2021 is coming to an end, I find myself reflecting back to this time last year and wondering what I was doing, what I was thinking, and who I was.
I mean, I know what I was doing, but I want to *feel* it again today.
Naturally, I reach for my phone and open my camera roll in search of that experience.
As if it could read my mind, my phone asks me if I’d like to see the album it conveniently curated of my pics from exactly a year ago. Well, yes, of course I do.
I open the album and see a pic of my father’s long-lost brother and my first cousin, a video of my son playing with our quarantine kittens, a shot of a label for one of the framed prints I hung in my booth at the newly opened Mercantile, and pictures of products I borrowed from fellow Mercantile merchants to photograph for a course I was building.
Woosh. I’m right back in December 2020.
Now my brain wants to come back to 2021, so I open my camera roll and swipe through the images I shot over the last few days. I see a pic of a bathroom I took for a client, our Christmas tree, styled shots of my framed prints in my studio, me dropping a gift certificate into a client’s mailbox, and pics of inspirational rocks I found on a walk that I gave to my kids (until we put them back out for someone else to find).
I’m amazed at how different life looks today than it did a year ago. Even more moving though, is how different it feels; an experience I’m able to have thanks to my camera roll.
Natalie Napoleon is a photography educator and career pivot coach for creatives. You can see her work and a list of the classes she offers at natalienapoleon.com.
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