One year ago I really had no idea what a “blog” even was! It all started with severe case of peer pressure at a DLWS, Moose Peterson and company, workshop in the Redwoods of California! When I showed up there Moose, Joe, Laurie, Kevin, Josh and Brad were all obsessed with... blog this and blog that... and when I said that I didn’t even really know what the heck a blog was I got the “what rock have you been living under” look from all of them!

So, I’m hanging out during some classroom time and I start poking around on my Mac and I knew that I had iWeb on it but I never really used it... and then it all started. I found this simple template and a pre-made blog page and bingo... I was already creating something fun and new. So, Moose’s former assistant, Josh, looks over my shoulder and starts cracking up! He says, “Are you actually starting your own blog???”. I said that I couldn’t stand the pressure so I just had to give in!

I have to say that at first I didn’t really know what I would write about. I was never much of a writer in school and couldn’t stand English class so the concept of writing something interesting that others may actually want to read was waaayyy off the radar for me. At first I thought that I should do a blog about teaching photography but then I was thinking of all of the people who may read it and not want to learn photography. Then I thought that I could make it about photography, music or just about anything I wanted to. But, I started reading other blogs that just ramble from one subject to another and they really didn’t hold my interest... sort of like a “mix” radio station that jumps from a rock song to a hip hop song to a country song... not for me!

Then I quickly figured out that I can write about the places that work and vacations take me. (I also thought that it would help my Mom keep up with where I am as well.) Since I travel around the country and sometimes the world for work I wanted to create a fun side project that documents what I do in those places when I am finished with work for the day. What I didn’t want to do was make my blog only about Nikon stuff because then it would be about work and besides, there are too many blogs about Nikon out there already. Sometimes I may add in something other than photography on here but I still try to stick with my original plan.

What this blog project has really helped me do is to look at each location I go to in a new way. Instead of just sitting in a hotel room when the day is done I challenge myself to make some photographs and post them here to keep the creative juices flowing. I have found that my photography has gotten better, my writing is improving and I have also made quite a few new friends along the way as well. So, I’d say this is proving to be a very successful project!

As I look back at the last year it’s nice to see that I have posted 45 regular blog entries and 13 additional entries about my trip to the Olympics in Beijing last summer. Thanks to some mentions by Moose Peterson and Scott Kelby I have had close to 10,000 views which I am pretty pleased with.

The ability to subscribe to these and be notified when an update is made is such a great idea and a piece of technology. As soon as I post this all of you who have subscribed to it will know instantly. That’s pretty awesome... although I don’t think the Chinese liked it too much. Every site that I tried to visit while in China that had an RSS feed on it was blocked including this one. Thank goodness I could update it from there... I just couldn’t see it like everyone else.

Thank you all for taking the time to visit and thanks for the kind emails. I apologize for the lack of posts in recent weeks but I do have some stuff that I want to tell you about... but, there aren’t enough hours in the day at the moment. I do have some fun stuff coming up next month including another visit to Reno for some airplane photography with Moose. And, on June 10th I am going to be the guest blogger on Scott Kelby’s blog which is a huge honor and an intimidating request. It’ll be fun, though!

Until next time...