I started the 75CentralPhotography Photoblog four years ago today.  It’s hard to believe that it’s already been four years of “daily photo goodness” and–more importantly–that I’ve never missed a day of adding a new photo (though I can’t say that I’ve never been a little late!).

A lot has changed in those four years.  I’ve lost some friends and met new ones.  I’ve met and gotten married to the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.  I’ve traveled from the lush hills of Québec to the flat, never-ending plains of the Texas Panhandle to the Gulf Coast to the desolate desert of Nevada, stopping off in the mountains of Utah, the hills of Arkansas and the arid nothingness that is eastern New Mexico along the way.  Four years ago, I didn’t have a pet…now I have two cats and a dog living with me.  I’ve moved from a Canon 400D to a 60D.  I’ve (mostly) switched from PC to Mac.  I’ve moved from Dallas to the tiny enclave of Addison.  I’ve been through two VW GTIs and now am driving a Tiguan.  Even my photoblog’s software platform has changed–from a home-brewed application I wrote myself to Pixelpost to, finally, WordPress.  The list of changes over the last four years could go on and on…

Things change, but I’ve never lost my passion for photography.  Each time I go out shooting, my skills still improve.  Composition.  Exposure.  Emotion.  These are things that you can’t learn from a book, but from experience.  Looking back through my archives, I can definitely see how this real-world education has improved my photography–some of my older stuff is almost embarrassingly bad!

So, to celebrate my four years of photoblogging, I put together a visual map of all of the 1462 photos in my photoblog, using a technique that I previously discussed here.  Basically, in the image below, each 20px x 20px block of color represents the averaged color of one of the photos on the photoblog.

It seems I like darker pictures!

Also, if you want to relive all four years in less than 2:30, here’s a video of every photo in random order:

So, anyhow, thanks for four great years and keep coming back for another four years of “Freshly Brewed Photos”.