I’m not sure what’s more remarkable: that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when I didn’t bring a camera with me everywhere, or that in the present, everyone else has a camera with them at all times.

Before a digital camera became part of my “everyday carry”, I always had a cellphone on me. The one I got in 2006 came with a crappy 640×480 pixel camera, but once I figured out how to get the photos off it, I could finally post arty, low-res photos to my blog for the sake of posting photos. It was like…Instagram. (See also: The 18th century version of Instagram)

Ok, so apparently Instagram is more than just silly filters (though that’s been the sole extent of my usage), but when I recently stumbled upon some of my old cellphone shots, it struck me how Instagram-esque they were. Damn, I got to the party early! (Of course they’re not square, but I didn’t hold onto the originals, so I can’t recrop without making them even smaller.)

The first photos were taken back when I was still living in Santa Rosa and working for O’Reilly, while the later ones were taken after I’d moved to San Francisco and was working for Federated Media (2006-2008). Altogether these incidental little snaps capture moments from a period of great change in my life. So I thought it’d be fun to gather a smattering of them in one place.