I’ve been working on Shooting My Universe for a year now. We have come a long way together. You may ask, “Together?” Yes, without my visitors, followers and fellow bloggers, this would just be an exercise in futility.
This seems like a good time to give some long overdo thanks to Richard who posts
At The Water and Joan who posts
Photographs from South Africa. Both have passed on blogger awards to Shooting My Universe.
When B introduced me to blogging with Smells Like Grape, our wine blog, I learned the importance of community and building a readership. With that experience, I wanted to find other photographic blogs with mindsets similar to mine to form my own community. At first, I had problems finding other blogs in my genre. There were lots of fine art blogs, kittens falling out of basket blogs and personal family blogs. These are fine and important to their authors, however not in my genre.
I found
Photographs from South Africa and emailed Joan requesting a link exchange. She accepted and this opened the door to a great community. Joan is a wonderful blogger and I learn something new about her universe every time I go there. She hardly misses a day and always responds to comments. I can’t say enough about Joan.
Richard is another great blogger. He loves his birds and has a sense of humor. He posts nearly daily except when the spring floods invaded his basement. I got an “out of the blue” email from Richard saying that he gave me a mention. The email said that I may want to check out his post for that day. When I arrived on his blog what I saw was that he told his community to go check out my blog. I’ve always been grateful and will never forget his generosity. Richard has a back yard full of Redpolls, Chickadees, Blue Jays and American Goldfinch that he feeds and photographs. Richard’s favorite weather is
Bird Chirping Weather.
So thank you both for the recognition. You guys are too cool. Thank you for the awards and helping me get a good jump start early on.
Part of the award game means disclosing some personal information that may not be readily available, and although it may be inane, here are some pieces of trivia about Steve B.
My first camera was given to me by my parents when I was Seven. We were going to move from my first home, so I wanted to take some pictures from my bedroom window of the view. Dad didn’t get my artistic concept and was a little perturbed that he spent money developing my film. Sorry you didn’t get it dad, but I’ve come a long way since then.
My first real camera was a Minolta XE-7 that I bought when I was 16.
My first big gig was being the photographic editor for my high school year book.
I have done bird counts in L.A. County in California and in Boulder County, Colorado. I’ve done breading bird surveys in Boulder County and in Yuma and Eckley, Colorado.
Number of birds on my life list? I don't know, I stopped counting years ago.
Why Photography? I can’t sing, can’t paint, I suck at music, and if you don’t write too good, you shouldn’t write too much. But any nitwit can push a button.
What do I think of Gloucester? In over 20 years, this is the first community that I lived in that I actually know and talk to my neighbors. We have been accepted by the folks here. The fishermen let me walk around the docks, (yeah, I look like a tourist when I walk around), and there are
guys like Joey at
Good Morning Gloucester that have helped me build a following here.
People ask me if I considered going pro. Yes I have. Nah, I’ll keep my day job, the work is easier and the pay is of a lot better.
