Wow, what a ride it has been over the past couple of years!  Flickr tells me that I joined the site in October 2010.  I was very new to serious photography at that point, and, to be honest, I almost gave up on sharing my work early on.  I just couldn’t get anyone to look at it!  It was sometime in 2011 that I was thrilled when one of my images (a portrait of my wife) hit a cumulative total of 100 views after being shared for months.  For some reason I kept going, and kept posting my work.  I made some good friendships along the way, and I will forever be grateful to those early people who “adopted me”, looked at my work, and threw some comments and even favorites my direction.  They helped to sustain me until I got a little momentum. It was a big deal when I hit that first 1000 views.

My first breakthrough was in early July, 2011, when I got my first “Explore” on Flickr.  Things were starting to click, and my work was improving.  But getting an Explore was thrilling to me.  Flickr Explore is the site’s system where it selects the 500 top most “Interesting” photos around the world for that day (there are millions of photos uploaded daily to Flickr).  No one knows for sure what constitutes “interesting”, but one thing is sure:  getting “Explored” means your photo (and you) get exposure to a much larger audience.  Here is that first Explore:

Things started to accelerate from there.  More Explores followed over the next few years (75 of them!), so it will never be as exciting as that first time.  It was amazing to hit the 100,000 view mark.  I couldn’t believe that so many people had looked at my work.  Flickr has been good to me over the last couple of years.  Many of my major opportunities, from Getty Images taking me on board to the magazines that have published me to some of the companies that I have built relationships with have had some root in Flickr.  My work is shared in a lot of other venues now, but Flickr remains one of my favorite places to display and share my work.

That momentum kicked into high gear this year.  I went from hundreds of views per day to thousands of views.  The number of “followers” drastically increased, and my audience grew as a result.  Leadership guru John Maxwell talks about the Big Mo (Momentum) and how key it is to any enterprise.  I finally have some of that momentum, and I look forward with anticipation to 2014 and what it has to offer.

So thanks a million for your support.  Thanks for coming to this space or any of the places that I share my work.  There are many talented people out there (more talented than me) that have never had an opportunity to showcase their work, but thanks to you I have had some great opportunities.  I would be honored if you continue to stop by here and continue to look at my work.  If you would like to look at my Flickr “Photostream”, click here.  God’s blessings in the year to come!

Dustin

P.S.  Here’s a new one for you to enjoy