When I was 23 years old and seven months into my first daily newspaper job, I didn't think too much about photographing a time capsule being put in the ground.
It was just one of many assignments and there have been more interesting things to photograph over the years than a group of people around a box they're putting in the ground.
Now 24 years - and half of my lifetime - later, I'm still at my first daily newspaper job as a photographer.
Never for a moment did I consider the fact that I might be around 24 years later to photograph that same box coming out of the ground.
Looking back on my original photograph, so much has changed.
I shot the capsule going in the ground on a film camera with black-and-white film that I processed myself with smelly chemicals in a darkroom lab here at the Citizen. I shot in black and white because the newspaper only printed in black and white then, except for special occasions.
I shot it coming out Friday with a digital camera with no film, a technological innovation I never would have predicted 24 years ago.
ull colour and online viewers only see my pictures in colour.
From black and white film and prints we made ourselves, we went to colour film and then fully digital. My shot today was downloaded from my camera into an Apple Mac computer and the entire darkroom process, including techniques to lighten, darken, sharpen and crop images, happens in Adobe Photoshop.
No dark. No red light. No chemicals.
Back then, I was the newest member of the Citizen newsroom and one of three full-time photographers. Today, I'm the longest-serving member of the newsroom and Charelle Evelyn and Samantha Wright Allen don't get my jokes or have any experience handling film or working in a darkroom because neither of them is 30 yet. I'm also the only full-time photographer at the Citizen now, with James Doyle shooting on weekends and when I'm away.
The nearly 25 years I've been at the Citizen have flown by, photographing the daily moments or slices of time of the people and the city and adding my own images to the patchwork quilt that is Prince George.
