VIDEO: The Early Days Of The Pandemic As Seen Through Your Camera Roll

VPM | By Nick Michael, Bronson Arcuri, Tsering Bista, Nickolai Hammar and Annabel Edwards

Published March 11, 2021 at 10:15 AM EST

Updated May 1, 2025

After an entire year, it’s easy to forget how suddenly the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives. But looking back through the photos on our phones can show us just how quickly everything changed.

We asked people to send us their last “normal” photo of 2020 and their first pandemic photo. Thousands of you responded.

From college acceptances to remote learning, planning a wedding to sharing vows over Zoom, hugging a grandparent to mourning them alone — these are some of the stories that defined our pandemic year.

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Nick Michael

Nick Michael is a supervising editor for the Visuals team, where he leads the design and delivery of complex editorial projects. Those projects include NPR-in-a-Minute, which in the span of 18 months piloted over a dozen shortform video series and garnered 1 billion views across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. He also serves as editorial lead for NPR's foray publishing podcasts to YouTube.

He has co-managed the growth of NPR's award-winning video team, highlights of which include co-crafting the look of NPR's signature interviews with President Obama, supervising two seasons of NPR Music's The Formula and coordinating 22 filmmakers across the country to document 2017's solar eclipse.

Michael joined NPR in 2014 as the lead video producer for Jazz Night in America, NPR's first program with companion radio and video content. Jazz Night's 2017 portfolio earned a Peabody nomination.

Before NPR, Michael co-founded 1504, a video studio based in Birmingham, Ala. He earned an M.A. in photojournalism from the University of Missouri.

See stories by Nick Michael