While a single change cannot take credit, it was a single change that was the catalyst to my rekindled passion for photography. In large part, the changes reduced the friction of taking photos and doing something with the photos. This is going to take some time, but hopefully anyone can learn at least one little nugget.

A Brief History

To understand my recent changes it would help to at least know a little bit about my photography background. I promise to keep it short though…

I got my first DSLR in 2001, it was the Canon EOS D30. Actually my wife bought one too and we shared three lenses: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L and Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L, and a Sigma 20mm f/2.8. At the time we lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and were avid travelers, hikers, and campers…and childless. For years we would take around 10,000 photos (topping out at over 12,000 in 2005) that were keepers¹.

Early on I just used Photoshop to edit the photos, managing them simply by using a date-based folder structure. Man, was that a pain! I do not remember the year, but I do remember the excitement when I discovered iMatch for the PC which was fantastic at photo management…if you were a geek². The UI was very functional and full of features, but definitely not user-friendly.

Photography changed drastically for us in 2006. We went from each having a camera body (Canon EOS 20D) to a single camera body (Canon EOS 5D) and Bryce, our son, was born. Gone were the days of spur of the moment road trips, each armed with cameras and the energy to drive most of the day just for a couple of hours of hiking and photography. Of course we did not regret one moment of being at home, sitting for hours on the couch, just watching our son sleep. He became our new subject, but the camera would go through times of collecting dust.

Fast forward to 2010 when the iPhone 4 came out. This was the first iPhone that really had a fantastic camera. Having such a decent camera with you at all times meant our then Canon 5D Mark II was all but killed. The downward spiral ended this year though with the release of the Canon 5D Mark III. It had one, tiny feature that would change everything for me…a second slot for SD cards.

A New Beginning

As I described in How the Canon 5D Mark III Killed My iPhone 4S, now that I had a DSLR with a SD card slot I could use and Eye-Fi.