Day 366: One last thing...

Well, here I am. Day 366. One full leap-year after I started my year-long Project 365. It's been quite the ride. To be honest I'm going to miss the pressure to come up with some new creative idea every day. I'll have to find a new project and a new way to keep myself working hard at photography. Make sure to check out the full view, it's the last day and I forgot to resize the picture, so I'm not going to bother correcting it and that means all of you get to see the full size detail shot :)

I decided to use this as my last picture because as I was thinking through everything I have taken a picture of this year, it occurred to me that I have taken a TON of pictures from what I called "the rock" and never bothered to get a picture OF the actual rock! (Proof: Search "rock" in the little search bar up there ^ or click this)This is the rock behind my house, from which so many of my panoramas, and of course days Day 51 and Day 209, were taken. I knew I should wrap up the year with this picture because it pretty much completes the list of important and story-worthy things in my life which I have photographed over this year. I spend a lot of time up on this rock. It's a great place for reflection and of course photography. It's always been my place to hang out when I'm stressed or angry, or just to chill out and enjoy the view. I'm so thankful I've spent my whole growing up time in a house with such cool rock-climbing opportunities nearby. And that's it for my final photo description!

Just to clarify for everyone, I've been doing these sometimes-detailed and sometimes-not descriptions all year not only for my own benefit in going back and remembering each day out of this year, but also because I've always felt that photographs deserve at least a little explanation. Unless it's purposefully a photo that should speak for itself I believe in letting viewers in on a few of the secrets of how it was taken, why it was taken, what challenges capturing it presented, and even the situation surrounding and leading up to the capture. I don't know why I've felt that way, but maybe it's part because of the entries on DPChallenge.com. I've always been bothered when I wonder how a photo was taken or what kind of lighting was used and there's absolutely NO description :P So that's why I did this all year. I now have a great catalog of the events of my year, and all of you get some of the behind the scenes details of my hobby and life.

Ok, third paragraph. I'm really going at it with this last post aren't I? I guess theres just a lot to say to properly wrap up such a long project. As I said in yesterday's post, I never thought I'd make it through the year without giving up, but thanks much to the encouragement of so many of my friends and family and even random people who follow my blog, I managed to hang in there. So thanks to all of my various visitors throughout the year, my extended and immediate family members for the encouragement and to all of my friends who just kept checking my blog even when I wouldn't update it for up to a 2 months *oops* :P I never quite met my goal of making the "Blogs of Note" page here on blogger, but that's ok. It was a crazy goal anyway :P I'm just happy that I made it to Day 366 and that I got an amazing 2228 unique views and 8426 page loads. That means over 2k computers visited my blog and visited 4 pages each on average! haha I guess that's pretty good for a blog that went completely unadvertised except some linking tirades on facebook and myspace :)

Most of all though I'm really thankful for all of you who commented over the course of the year, and even one of you who just started commenting :) I don't think I can name you all, but there are a ton and you know who you are, so thanks to anyone who took the time to leave even one comment this year. It's the encouragement from those comments that kept inspiring me to look for new artistic opportunities each day. I think if this were some awards ceremony, say the Oscars, they'd have dragged me off stage by now, so I'm done :)

I'll post a link on this blog just as soon as I figure out where I'm going to put all my pictures now :)

It's been a great year, I'm looking forward to what the future holds for both me and my love of photography.