I am Richard Zulewski, a resident of River Creek and the curator of this archive. While the landing page of this site shares my philosophy on capturing moments, this archive is the practical result of that passion: a collection of life in our community spanning over two decades.

The Project History

I began documenting River Creek in 2001. What started as a casual hobby—snapping photos of neighbors at social events—quickly grew into a comprehensive digital history. I realized that while individual memories fade, images have the power to keep the spirit of a community alive. Today, this site serves as my "visual memory bank" for the River Creek community.

My Gear

I am often asked what equipment I use to capture these images. Over the last 20 years, the technology has changed, but the goal remains the same.

Primary Camera: Nikon D200 is the current camera, but I started with a Kodak, followed by an Olympus, a Samsung, and a Nikon CoolPix. You can certainly detect the difference in the quality of the older photos when digital photography was just becoming possible for an amateur photographer.

Favorite Lens: I waited to buy the Nikon D200 until their 18-300 zoom was available. That is by far my favorite lens. If I break down and get a new camera, it will have to be one that natively supports the 18-300 Nikon lens.

Post-Processing: I use Adobe Lightroom Classic to organize and develop the thousands of images in this library. I started with Google's Picasa; sadly when Google no longer supported the product I moved on to Lightroom Classic. I have Adobe Photoshop but have no idea how to use its power. I use Lightroom Classic primarily to organize and publish the photos to the Backlight software website. Before using Backlight it would take me several days to write the HTML code to publish the photos. Now I organize the photos into albums, crop them as needed, and push the button named Publish. Publishing now takes minutes instead of days writing HTML code.

Web Hosting: This archive is hosted on Bluehost and is built using Backlight, allowing for the high-resolution display of these galleries.

Contact Me

I am always looking to improve this record.

• For Neighbors: If you live in River Creek, you likely know how to reach me. Please feel free to give me a call.
• For Corrections: If you see a name or date that needs updating, or if you wish for a photo of yourself to be removed, please contact me.
• Contributions: If you have old photos of River Creek to add to the archive, I would love to see them.
• Email: r-zul at outlook (dot com) — Please type this manually to prevent spam.