Cheers. Leica M8, Zeiss ZM 2.8/21 Biogon

You read that right: one million hits since inception in late February 2012. Things didn’t really kick off til mid-March, so let’s call it about six months. It’s been one heck of a ride since then – crazy at times with all the email, but rewarding with all of the new friends I’ve made, new things I’ve been able to learn from all of you and the feeling of being able to contribute something back to the photographic community. I honestly didn’t think the site would take on quite as much of a life of its own ever, much less in half a year. (Now if only I had a dollar for every hit, heh) To date, there are 350+ posts and over half a million words of content – some monster articles like the Camerapedia! and 10×10 tips take up 30,000 and 10,000 on their own respectively. I’m proud to say that this wealth of information is something that few sites can claim, much less that it was all generated by one individual in their spare time.

When I started the site, my aim wasn’t to be the most popular, or have the most reviews, or the most images, or provide a user community for a particular camera…rather, it was to do two things: firstly, share my experience of the transition from full time corporate to full time photographer; secondly, create something that I would want to read – something that had a bit of everything. It would be the thinking man’s photography daily – there are plenty of sites catering to other needs, but few to this niche. It would need to talk about more than just the gear (though the gear is of course an important enabler) – it would have to go deeper into understand technique, subject, and beyond; into understanding philosophy and the psychology of the viewer to enable to photographer to reverse-engineer the desired emotional response to an image. There some topics I still haven’t even touched – lighting is one of them – and some that I’d like to explore in more detail – psychological responses, and why we consider art to be art, for instance – and these are things I’ll cover in future articles.

I don’t honestly know where the site will go in the the future, but I do hope you will all continue to be a part of it – and if you have suggestions for things you’d like to see me discuss or cover, or ways you think the site can be improved, please  share them. I can’t promise to be all things to all people, but I do promise to try to continually improve.

So, I would like to say a individual and enormous thank you to all of my readers, fans, subscribers, clients, partners, supporters, email school students, workflow DVD purchasers, competition entrants, rebloggers, groupies…without you all, none of this would have been possible, nor would it continue to be. You have my gratitude. Thank you again! MT

Celebratory self portrait, Fuji X100