I didn’t mean to spend my whole afternoon sitting on the floor, but that’s how these things go. You open one old box, and suddenly you’re sliding down twenty years like it’s nothing. Mine was a plastic storage bin with a cracked lid, shoved behind winter coats in the hallway closet. I pulled it out because my granddaughter asked if we had any old pictures of her dad when he was little. She has a school project, something about family history, and she said it in that sweet, hopeful way that makes you feel like you should try.

Inside the box were things I didn’t even remember saving. A broken keychain. A flyer from a fair we went to in 2008. And, tucked under a stack of old birthday cards, I found a handful of CD cases and two tiny memory cards taped to an envelope. I had forgotten that cameras used to save photos that way. Back then, I felt so proud walking around with a little digital camera with only three buttons on the back. I thought I was high-tech.

I brought the whole stack to the living room and slid a CD into the old laptop we keep around for exactly this reason. When the folder opened, my breath actually caught. Hundreds of pictures filled the screen. So many old moments I didn’t even know I had kept. The first shots were from a beach trip we took the summer before my kids hit their teenage years. I clicked through them slowly. Most were blurry or crooked. Some were so bright I could barely tell what was happening. But I remembered every moment.

There was a picture of my son, maybe ten years old, jumping over a wave. I must have snapped it too early because his foot was still on the sand and the splash hadn’t happened yet. The horizon tilted down like the whole ocean was sliding sideways. Even the sky looked confused. I laughed out loud. Not because it was bad, but because it was so familiar. I used to take pictures like that all the time and think they were pretty good.

I didn’t know anything about angles or focus back then. I didn’t know how light worked, or that the best pictures sometimes come from waiting instead of rushing. But what I did have was curiosity. And the internet. It wasn’t the internet we have now. It was slower, clunkier, and half the people used made-up names like “LensMaster24.” Still, those old forums were where I first learned to share my photos. You’d upload one, hit refresh ten times, and hope someone stopped by to give thoughts. And they did. They always did.

The feedback wasn’t always gentle. People could be blunt in ways that would probably surprise younger folks today. Someone once told me a picture of my kids looked like it had been taken “through a jar of mayonnaise.” I remember being annoyed and then, a few minutes later, squinting at the image and realizing they were right. It was cloudy, flat, and unfocused. The way they said it stuck, and so did the lesson. That blunt little corner of the internet became my classroom.

I didn’t know it at the time, but those years were shaping the way I see. Not just how I take pictures, but how I slow down and pay attention. I didn’t understand shutter speed or aperture, but I understood what happened when I waited for the sun to fall behind a cloud. I understood that a picture felt different when I bent down to eye level with my kids instead of towering above them. The simple act of trying, of sharing, of getting that early photo feedback, made me feel like I was learning something real.

As I clicked through more folders, I found a set of photos from a camping trip we took in the mountains. The kids were younger there, maybe seven and nine. They built a tiny fort out of sticks and leaves, proud as anything. I must have taken a dozen photos of that silly pile of branches. Every single picture was either underexposed or taken from the wrong angle. You could barely see their faces. The shadows made everything look gloomy, even though I remember that day being full of bright laughter.

But here’s the funny thing: I didn’t feel embarrassed. I felt grateful. That’s what surprised me most. I didn’t look at the old photos and see mistakes. I saw effort. I saw a parent trying to hold time still. I saw love, even in the blurry parts.

We had this old desktop computer back then, set up in the corner of the dining room. At night, after the kids fell asleep, I’d sit there with a cup of tea and upload the newest batch of shots. The forums moved slow. Sometimes it took two days before anyone replied. But that waiting made every comment feel like a gift. I remember how excited I’d get when someone drew an edit over one of my pictures — showing where the horizon should be or suggesting I move closer next time. Those edits felt like magic, like someone turning on a little light in my brain.

Back in the living room, while the laptop hummed and the grandkids played in the next room, I kept scrolling. There were family portraits I attempted with the self-timer. All of us squished on the couch. In half the photos, one of the kids was blinking, or someone was halfway through a sneeze. There was one where the dog walked right in front of the camera at the last second, blocking everyone but my left elbow. I used to get so frustrated back then. Now the picture made me laugh so hard I had to wipe my eyes.

I clicked to another album — one filled with sunsets. Oh boy. I took so many of those. All of them too bright or too orange. Back then, I thought sunsets were easy. Point at the sky, press the button. Done. But I never understood how tricky light can be. I didn’t know how to set the exposure. I didn’t know how a tiny change in angle could turn a washed-out mess into something soft and warm.

And yet, I kept trying. I kept sharing. And people kept helping.

What struck me as I scrolled wasn’t the mistakes. It was the whole journey. I could see myself learning in real time. Every year, the photos got a little steadier. A little clearer. A little more thoughtful. Not because I magically got better. But because people showed me how to see.

By the time my kids became teenagers, I wasn’t posting as much. Life got busy. Work changed. The forums slowly faded away. But the lessons stayed. Even when I wasn’t taking many pictures, I still found myself noticing light on a wall, or how shadows fell across a table. Photography became a way of paying attention to life, even when I didn’t have a camera in my hand.

I kept clicking through the old folders until my legs started to fall asleep from sitting on the rug too long. The living room was quiet except for the little hum of the laptop fan. My granddaughter passed through once or twice, asking if I had found anything she could use for her project. I told her “soon,” even though I knew I was drifting deeper into my own memories than I expected.

One folder opened to a series of pictures from my old job. I used to bring my tiny point-and-shoot camera with me sometimes. Back then, nobody cared. Phones didn’t have cameras strong enough to bother anyone, and the building didn’t have fancy rules about taking pictures. I had taken shots of my desk, the break room, and even the vending machine when it got stuck eating my dollar. The pictures weren’t special to anyone but me, but I liked how they froze a little slice of a normal day. Now, looking at them almost twenty years later, it felt like visiting a place that doesn’t exist anymore.

One photo in that folder made me stop. It was a picture of my coworker, Ed, leaning against the wall near the elevator. I must have taken it by accident, because half his face was cut off and the lights above him were flickering. But I remembered the exact moment. We were talking about our kids. He was telling me a story about his daughter drawing on the dog with markers. I remember we were laughing so hard we forgot we were late to a meeting.

I stared at that photo longer than I meant to. It’s funny how a bad picture can still feel perfect because of the memory behind it.

Scrolling forward, I reached a folder called “Practice Shots.” I didn’t even remember naming it that. Inside were pictures of everyday things I must have used to test new tips people gave me online. There was a spoon on the kitchen counter. A flower from the grocery store. A glass of water catching sunlight. Even a baseball cap hanging on a hook. At the time, it felt silly to practice on things that didn’t matter. But those tiny challenges helped me learn how shadows worked. How reflections could surprise me. How a tiny shift in where I stood could make everything look different.