That's right, can you believe it? One year has passed already! I had no idea.. I opened up steemd to have a look at my profile and there it was in the corner... 365 days today! Time flies when you are having fun!

So what have I spent my year doing? Well as a photographer I have been focussed on sharing my photography with my audience. Whether its a tutorial, a story or a travel write up. I have built up 1404 followers, joined #thealliance and made some wonderful friends there, travelled to some far-flung regions of the globe. Lets have a quick look back:

I live in Edinburgh Scotland, and one of my favourite things to do has been to share some of the beautiful sights of my city.

Scenic Ceilings

I posted about the uniqueness of ceilings that you can find in Europe as well as other places.. an often overlooked and completely unnoticed part of a room.. there are some incredible ceilings out there. Just think about how often you actually bother to look up .. then think of Michelangelo spending 4 years hunched over, painting the sistine chapel ceiling. Here is one of my favourites, the ceiling of St Giles Cathedral:

Sunsets

I shared some of my favourite sunsets. Its a popular topic in Edinburgh as we have such expressive skies. Every sunset is unique and beautiful and worth a photo! Even outside of Edinburgh sunset photos are popular among photographers.. we don't call it golden hour for nothing! Its like crack for your eyes:

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Tutorials

I wrote some tutorials over the past year as well..

How to Photograph a Solar Eclipse:

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How to photograph an International Space Station fly-by:

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How I make an HDR:

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How I made my Steemit Profile Pic:

There were more tutorials than these that I have on my feed. If you scroll back far enough you will find them all. There was the tutorial for photographing the moon, building your own tilt shift lens, photographing lightning and avoiding copyright violations and plagiarism.

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Travel around the World

I went on some pretty amazing trips in the past year. This was not planned to coincide with steemit or anything like that. In fact, these trips were mostly booked and planned long before I even discovered steemit. It was just serendipitous that my travel plans and love of photography are compatible with steemit and what I like to share here. Here are some of the more memorable travels I have posted on:

Singapore

After a week and a half in the Indonesian jungle with NO AC, we were relieved to be in Singapore.. still hot as hell, but with the sweet relief of air conditioning whenever you went indoors.. and Londoners... Singapore's metro system is also Air-Conditioned.. Tell your local government to install AC on the tube!

Glenfinnan/The Harry Potter Train

I shared with you a trip I made to the scottish highlands, to the glenfinnan viaduct and even rode the steam train that they filmed on. Although admittedly this trip is from about 5 years ago! I only now on steemit had ocassion to write about it!

The Maldives

Without a doubt the one trip I was most excited about this whole year was my diving trip to the Maldives. It ticked two boxes on the bucket list for me. Doing a liveaboard and diving in the Maldives. A Liveaboard is when you 'live aboard' a boat for a few days, week or more and go diving ever day all day instead of having to come back to shore every morning.

There were some major highlights, but none greater than encountering a whale shark!

I got some serious sea legs on that trip, when we got back onto solid land I struggled to walk in a straight line!

The Future

It has been an interesting and wild ride this year. I had some early posts payout in the hundreds of dollars, blowing my mind, and posts that paid out less than a dollar for months on end.. it can be frustrating and demotivating, and it can be exciting and hugely rewarding!

Steemit has it's ups and downs but I have faith in the platform. Its one of the first of its kind in being a decentralised, blockchain technology.. and though I don't understand all the technical details, I understand enough to find it exciting, with an interesting future. I have invested some of my own fiat currency into steem not just to increase my SP voting power but also because I have confidence that this platform will continue to grow from strength to strength. There are some great witnesses out there doing a lot of work for the community, @nobelwitness, @enginewitty, @guiltyparties and @c0ff33a to name but a few. They have my vote, and I would implore you to vote for them, or take the time to learn about witnesses, their importance to the platform and use your vote on witnesses you believe contribute positively to the platform.

As steemit grows, I hope to grow with it, so I may contribute more to the community, but also to meet more great people, make even more new friends scattered across the globe and of course make a living off steemit! At the moment I am still miles away from that goal.. but one day!

I had hoped that I would have reached rep 60 before my 1st year was up, but I am currently on 59.916 according to steemnow.com which is sooooo close! But I did pass 1000 followers which I am proud of.

Thank You

Before I wrap up this post, I just wanted to thank every one of my followers for .. well following me, upvoting, commenting on my posts, being supportive, and producing amazing content for me to upvote, comment and enjoy on this platform. A special thanks to my steemit family #thealliance for being the amazing, support group that they are. They do so much for the steemit community its hard to believe! Just the charity initiatives alone are making a big difference to many lives!

I am looking forward to another year of adventure on this platform. I predict things are going to get even better!

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Thanks for Looking.
Follow me and read more of my posts here: @fiftysixnorth
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