Life happens; and like most people I take a lot of photos to remember it. My phone automatically uploads photos via Dropbox (opens new window) (shameless referral link), for both immediate access and to ensure all my data is in at least two spots at all times (habit from my life as a developer). As my phone and Dropbox get full I batch import the photos in to iPhoto for long term storage.

By far my favorite part of this process is watching the photos preview as they import. I tend to burst take photos and pick the best one to share at the time, but I never delete the blurry, crooked or duplicate shots. The side effect of this is a stop motion video of what I've been up to as the photos are importing.

As I started the process today it made me relive the memories and in itself was bringing back all the emotions of the events. I wanted to capture this so I could replay it later, after a few hundred photos I started recording my screen and the process (really wish I started at the beginning, oh well).

I've created stop motion videos (opens new window) before and there is typically a standard stop length in between each photo. With this import process though the files are being transferred at the same time so the time delay based on file size. This creates a really cool effect of stops and bursts through the photos. Really wish iPhoto had a way to reproduce this effect without going through the import process.

2,500 photos later this video of my life over the last few months was produced:

It may be a little meta but the memory of the memories really makes me appreciate everyone and everything around me. And now it makes me want to take more photos.

(15 minutes is a long time to sit through a video without sound, I don't blame you if you bail) 😛