Recalling decades of secured memories
This Day features your then and now moments
In 1998 Kevin Freitas received a much-desired Christmas gift: a digital camera. He started capturing his high school years on film but printing was expensive and inconvenient.
Today, Freitas, a Sr. Design Technologist at Amazon, has entrusted his collection of more than 150 thousand photos with Amazon Photos. Years 1998 to 2007 were captured on his various digital cameras and manually uploaded to the cloud, whereas the years 2013 to present day were automatically uploaded from his iPhone. The remaining years (2008 to 2012) are an upload project still in-progress. And the more photos he trusts with us, the more Freitas will benefit from features like This Day.
This Day automatically surfaces photos showing what you were up to on a specific day in years past. You can also enjoy auto-generated artifacts created from your photos across the years. Every day, This Day tries to create collages using two to four photos, or animated photo-slideshows set to music. And if you so choose, you can easily share them with friends and family. The more photos you upload to Amazon Photos, the better This Day gets. Consider turning on Auto-Save to build your photo collection with Amazon Photos. Your This Day feed will thank you.
Our photographs act as the visual punctuation between the days (and months, and years) that tend to flow together. They show us both how far we’ve come via a changing hair line or that pesky new wrinkle, and highlight aspects that have remained the same — like those dimples you’ve had since day one.
For Freitas, his bountiful collection of photos pays in spades. Even before digital photography, Freitas had taken pains to document the reality of his day-to-day with candid shots of friends from jazz band, the natural beauty that surrounded him in Tacoma, and special holidays with family. In fact, the very first images on his digital roll shows jazz band rehearsals and college friends from 1998.
Photos were taken with a digital camera borrowed from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma that used floppy disks to store photos.
This Day also gives Freitas a perspective on time. “When I lived in Tacoma, I had a view of Mount Rainier. I saw it every day, at different times and in different lights. Mount Rainier reminds me of college, college reminds me of friends and colleagues I interacted with at that time. I’ll look at a friend from my past and remember all our good times together.”
Currently, Freitas resides 35 miles further north, in Seattle, with his wife and six-year-old-child. “My son has changed so much in the last two or three years. I can already appreciate how tiny he was compared to how big he is today.”
He compares Tacoma, his first home-away-from home, as an architectural marker for his personal life. “I see buildings and places that I use to visit and have since been demolished,” says Freitas. “Or, what were new buildings at the time but that today are old. I’m seeing the city’s landscape transform alongside my personal history. I’ve started seeing the same since moving to Seattle, and throughout life in the places I visit and friends and family I love.”
Freitas looks forward to having the entirety of his photo collection uploaded to Amazon Photos, which he aims to complete sometime this year. Once he does, he can expect more This Day memories surfaced, and with them, a better remembrance of things past.
“Not only will my photos be safely backed up but I can easily enjoy the fond memories that Amazon Photos surfaces for me,” Freitas says.
Prime members get free, unlimited photo storage.
