What's the oldest picture you have saved on your device?

Scan of a print photograph from, I want to say 1985? 1986? Something like that. My grandparents cat losing her damn mind because a fly got in the house.

me skiing in Russia in the early 90s just after the dissolution of the Soviet Union

I tend to keep my phone's photo reel fairly empty to stay under Apple's free limit for backups.

But this photo has been with me for a few years:

It is a photo of Arlanda airport, the busiest airport in Sweden, taken at about 08:00 on a workday during the early stages of the pandemic.

I had to go on a domestic trip to set up a computer for a VIP at an external location, and had to fly.

It was such a bizzare experience that I had to take a few photos...

February 2011.

My now-deceased cat.

Oldest thing saved to my phone; is from 2021. My cloud storage, OTOH, can go all the way back to 2008.

This is on my phone. I will post again tomorrow from my computer.

A screenshot I took for whatever reason in 2006, it's quite a relic.

Impromptu memorial on Las Vegas Blvd less than a week after the shooting in 2017. I was attending a conference that week, which they chose not to reschedule, because 'we can't let terrorism win!'

It was an eerie feeling being there so soon after.

I changed my phone maybe 3 years ago so this is the oldest photo stored on it.

A picture that I send to my significant other when I’m going back home and missed the bus or tramway. It happens way to often to my taste.

I still want one

Probably this scanned photo of my grandfather in WWII somewhere in France or Germany around 1943-44. He was a calculator for the 8th Armored Division 398th Armored Field Artillery Battalion M-7 tanks.

Quick shots from the roof of my student CO-OP back when I bought my first digital camera in 2002

The tennis court in the second photo turned into a parking structure something like 20y ago, afaik FORT AWESOME is still there

Me, returning home after a night of drinking.

My guitar <3 photo from 2012

March 14, 1999.

It appears to be the first photo I took on my Sony Mavica camera - the one you put a floppy disk in.

I think it was in the car park at the back of RetraVision in Bourke, NSW, Australia.

Camera still works.

An etch-a-sketch art piece from 2018. I used to make etch-a-sketch drawings when I was younger, mostly of trains and buildings. I think I liked the limitations of the method. I drew them while waiting in the room where my sibling took lessons, and while I later got my own, it doesn't work very well so I no longer do them.

(This isn't the same drawing, but it's close to the first, and doesn't contain my face in the reflection)

Me in 2015 in a box seat at Lincoln Financial Field. It was an Eagles preseason game and I had been doing an internship at a law firm that owned the box.

It was a fun few months but it convinced me not to go to law school. I still remember when one of the partners at the firm looked me dead in the eye and said “you know we have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession, right?”

Edit: second oldest photo is an article someone sent me over a year later, titled “Is communism cool? Ask a millennial.” Pretty sure it was written by some Heritage Foundation hack or something and I got into a spirited discussion with a family member over it.

July 25th 2024

Edit: For clarity, my friends and I have some wild humor, I received a similar one in response lmao

My phone started freaking out after a recent update and I was just about to go on a trip. So I hurriedly factory reset to get it functional and hoped all automatic backups were good. The critical ones were for sure, but stuff like camera roll I don't care about as much.

I haven't even tried to load and check the camera roll backup yet, meaning the oldest photo on my phone is a whopping two weeks old and is of my parking space number at the airport. It's a grey Camry, just about the most common color and the most common car. Man, I would never find it if I forgot where I parked it.

If we expand "devices" to my laptop and storage drives, the oldest photo is early 1900s. A shot of my great grandmother as a little girl standing outside the sod house she grew up in.

2/2/2021 - A spring roll recipe...

I think they were okay. I used a recipe once that used chestnuts for texture and it was freaking amazing!

I've not been able to find the same recipe again.

From 2004. Wonder what they're doing now. Probably retired, right?

I've got something from at least 2012 on my phone. Just a picture of me in a suit. Not a good picture either.

I took this to mean the oldest picture in my cloud account, because my phone manages its storage automatically.

According to the metadata, it’s from Apr 6, 2007. It’s from a trip to my grandma’s house. I don’t know why I took a picture of it. Anyone want to make them and send me one?

My friend's dog Greta. She was already an old lady when I took this picture in 2015 and passed a year or two ago.

I don't have my device with me, but it's my first cosplay one.

I've got the entire catalogue from the Royal photographic society 1870-1915 saved left over from my PhD. But the earliest of those are scans-of-sketches-of-photos because they pre-date the technology to easily duplicate photographs.

2016, apparently a screen cap from when I was playing Blackbox.

I won't post it but it's a picture of my old roommate with her almost crawling out of bed. Her bedroom is a disaster with old food plates, clothes everywhere, fast food bags, etc. Just a disaster. It wasn't gross, just very messy. She had just woken up and had been drinking the night prior.

I took a photo of it all from like 45 degrees up and stylized it in an oil painting style. I printed it out in canvas and gave it to her as a gift and titled it, "depression" she loved it and still has it.

I dont even speak Spanish lol

I guess it's something my friend who studies in Spain sent me

1937, family photo

Oldest photo that was taken? Or photo of the oldest photo?

October 2005 is when I saved this and it has been through many phones.

I was disappointed to find out the oldest picture on my phone is a system icon file from 2017, two phones ago. I guess it tagged along on the external SD card.

Not easy to tell as I have a lot of old photo scans where I'm not sure of the original date. So let's try this terrible photo, which I think was the first on a roll taken sometime in the 1980s. I don't remember that bunny so I must have been very young.

And I'm still loving Deftones, over 20 years later

Just a high score I got in a crummy mobile game I used to play where all you do is shout as a head and try to go as far as possible to the right. Circa 2018. Oldest saved photo I have on the phone I am currently using. Otherwise, it'd probably just be a picture from a school trip to Seattle.

The oldest photo on my phone is about three weeks old because I often go through my photos and delete or archive them.

Not the oldest oldest, but the ones from that day that were the least bad. 2014 supposedly.

Saved pic I used as reference for my Oath of Ancients Paladin idea from waaaaaaaay back that started out as basically Dinidan of the round table and The Green Knight and eventually turned into a tree.

From Brooklyn, 2012