We made it to the end of 2016! I’ve chosen a heck of a year to take on this very ambitious 366 day challenge. I set off with the goal to bring you all a daily photo post (images not shown in my portfolio prior), garnered from imagery captured in previous years, lost in a pool of hard drives, but also photographed from this year’s travels. You see it as a quick flip of your thumb or scroll of the mouse, but behind the scenes, each day’s post involves hours of digging deep in archives, finding an image that spoke to me and presenting it to the world. Every image is tagged, mapped, and meticulously massaged to my liking. I researched locations to bring out facts, wrote musings and ramblings, and cursed often at my nagging writer’s block.
One thing to note: I have no complaints about this choice – it’s been one of the best projects I’ve taken on. It has forced me to experiment, relearn processing techniques, hone my skills and even find a lot of beautiful images I had already captured and forgotten about (many of which are my new favorites)! For anyone who desires to be an artist or further their skills – go do and do often. Don’t stop and keep moving forward. All castles are built brick by brick.
I started on January 1st of 2016 and today’s post should be the last, however, there were a few days skipped due to personal reasons or lack of internet during travel days. You’ll see those remaining posts in the coming days.
Somewhere in all of this, for those in the know, my wife and I welcomed a new daughter to the world last March. As all parents know (and we quickly learned), sleep is depreciated heavily in these early years. But we keep our beautiful daughter involved and at nine months old now, she has already visited 18 states and 21 National Park locations. I’m quite proud that she’s getting the opportunity to travel and experience the world.
I want to say thank you to all of you for the support and encouraging likes, comments and shares over the past year. And a mega-big thanks to my wife who believes in my efforts and keeps me on task. I do this because it gives a smile to those in need, offers a path to learn something new, and even provides a pause in the every day monotony for many. This is far from being a lucrative endeavor, in the monetary sense, but the value in experience often outweighs the negatives. Keep supporting your artist friends, their dreams and their passions because they make the world a better place. It’s a long winding road to success but let’s enjoy the view at every turn.
I wish you all a happy, safe New Years and I look forward to wandering in wonder with you next year!
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