Year One!
“Don’t just count the years, make your years count.”
—George Meredith
Wow… I can’t believe it has already been a year since this whole adventure started—this past Monday, March 15th to be exact. Here’s to year one!
To be honest with you, while my intention was to of course keep up with my writing, I was somewhat doubtful I would be able to. However, as it turns out, I’m happy to report that I’m still here, and I don’t intend to stop!
With that in mind, I hope you can join me as I take a look back and reminisce about some of the posts I most enjoyed, and how they have helped me pave my way on this amazing adventure.
“Why? This has always been one of my most common questions to ask”
My very first post (“Why?”) was definitely important because that was my introduction to the Blogging world. It allowed me to get my feet wet, as well as set the pace and feeling for all future posts. And when people began posting comments, I really felt a connection. It was, and still is, very encouraging when I read people’s opinions and thoughts.
“The origins of the word ‘Hysteria’”
From there, the next few posts started being once a week, but that became a bit much and kind of stressing. So I decided to slow down a bit and instead do one every other week. After doing a few posts using this new schedule, my creative juices started flowing and that’s when the “Words With Friends!” post came about. That really allowed me to explore something different and challenge my photography by trying to create more conceptual imagery.
"Charismatic Spanish song writer and lead singer for “Jarabe de Palo”, Pau Donés.”
Now that I had a good pace going, I felt I had finally started to hit my stride. Then something unexpected happened that I never thought would inspire me. I had heard of many artists passing away before, and while yes it was sad, it had never been anything to which I had any sort of connection. But when Pau Donès from Jarabe de Palo passed away from cancer, it really hit me. Thankfully I had now discovered my voice, and was able to use that and share with the world his music and what it meant to me when I wrote “Gracias Pau” in both English and Spanish.
“I met a super sweet person whom I now proudly call friend.”
The next stop was dual purpose. First, I really wanted to share my story of how I met my friend Dorothea via a most unique way. And second, macro photography was something I had been wanting to try for a while. So I rented a macro lens and went to town—by the way, this is the exact same lens I just recently purchased! This marked the beginning for all future macro photography shown.
“Don’t Blink!”
A couple of posts later, I had the opportunity to open up myself a bit more and share something about myself and the things I like. With “Blink!” (Yes, I did rent the macro lens again, hehe!) I began to show the world more of who I am, the things I like to do, and some other skills you may not have known I had. =)
“I got to photograph several cosplayers in front of a green screen!”
After a few more fun posts, a new challenge arrived with “A Green Adventure!”. This by far became the most challenging one yet, not to mention very tiresome—the whole shoot lasted close to 10 hours. I hope you agree with me in that the imagery turned out pretty amazing if I do say so myself. I learned a lot here and even got ideas for possible future posts.
“I feel like I’ve stumbled upon something I didn’t know I was looking for!”
Then another unexpected thing happened. When I was doing research for my “Merry Scary Christmas” post, I ran across someone that had done some really amazing photography for a Hellboy figure. My immediate thought was, “I HAVE GOT to try that!”. And that’s when my search for toy figures began. I raided my nephew’s toys for numerous figures, and I was also able to get a friend to let me use some of her highly cherished Doctor Who 1:6 scale figures. Let me tell you, the green screen stuff was a cakewalk compared to the challenges I faced here! However, this has been the most fun shoot I’d done in the entire year. I had so much fun that two things came from it besides the “Toy Stories” post:
It really pushed me to save up and finally get my own Macro lens.
I ended up creating a new Instagram Channel that will be focused only on Toy Photography.
If you’re interested in checking out my new Instagram Channel please come on by and hit a quick follow to stay up to date: @BasToyPhoto. Just so you know though, I’m still working on it. I’m even having an original avatar being created for it. For now, it only has some of the photography you’ve already seen, but just hit that follow button so you don’t miss out on anything when it fully launches!
This brings me to the end of the journey exploring some of the highlights of this past year. As always, I really appreciate your time and thank you for your continued support, it really means a lot to me!
If you haven’t already, make sure you don’t miss any new posts by signing up below. Take care of yourselves and see you back here in two weeks!