It’s been 2 months since I last wrote a blog post. When I started the blog, I got a super good deal from my work, half off a one-year subscription. I was willing to gamble with a $72.00 investment. I enjoyed writing the posts and sharing my photography. When my subscription came up for renewal and I was faced with a much bigger fee, I had to weigh the value of this experience. I haven’t made a dime off the blog, and while many friends tell me they enjoy my postings, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend $144.00 to entertain a couple dozen family members and friends. So, I cancelled my subscription. My sister noticed I wasn’t putting anything out, but no one else seemed to miss it. I still had a desire to share my photography, so I opened an Instagram account and linked it to my Facebook page. For the most part, posting to social media has been an unfulfilling experience. Writing short descriptions of a photo doesn’t truly capture the emotion of the full backstory. In short, I missed the blog. Last week I had an epiphany. I wasn’t writing for you, my unknown audience, I’m writing for myself. While I can’t justify spending the $144.00 on friends, family, and a few other readers I’ve managed to lure in, I can easily justify it for myself. It’s an outlet I need.

One of the definite advantages to running the blog was a nagging desire to create content, which in turn served as a motivator to go shooting. In my original model, I attempted to shoot Friday evening, process the images on Saturday, and then compose the writing on Sunday and post. Towards the second half of the year, I decided that was too much pressure as it sometimes conflicted with other weekend activities with family or church. I began moving towards overlapping my shoots. I still try to do most of my photography on weekends, but now I spend a full week editing the images and thinking about the writing. Now that I am rebooting my posting, I’m not sure I will stick to any schedule. I want to put more effort into the writing and that will likely require multiple evenings on the computer.

I always hoped to hear from someone with a comment about the post. Mostly it’s my wife, Virginia who adds a comment. She’s with me often when I shoot. I think her comments are mostly out of charity for me. I don’t think she likes seeing me fling my life into the ether with no response. Since I’ve decided the blog is more for me than anyone else, I think I can be satisfied with the great silence beyond the computer screen. BUT, should anyone decide to make a comment, I would certainly enjoy reading it.

These images were made on the day we celebrated our birthdays. Our birthdays are two days apart and we generally combine them into one day of fun. Neither of us has climbed Mount Timpanogos in a few years and we decided this would be a good challenge. I’m certain the mountain has gotten higher and steeper since I last climbed it. We were two worn out old geezers by the time we returned to the car. I’m usually satisfied with only attempting to reach the Timpanogos Basin and not going all the way to the summit. I enjoy seeing the wildflower meadows above tree line and so I usually make that my goal. We had a very heavy snowpack this year with a late spring melt-off. Because of that, the meadows weren’t uncovered for the usual bloom time at the end of July. We made this trip up the mountain a full month later this year. It was a beautiful bloom, but the plants didn’t seem as full and high as previous years. I suspect that the plants can sense a shorter season and push through to the bloom stage without developing as much stem and leaf tissue. It was a glorious hike none the less. I wish I could have been there for early or late light, but on our birthdays, we also enjoyed sleeping in.