I have lost track of how many years I have been photographing, but it started when I was about 11 and I bought my first home darkroom kit from money saved up from delivering newspapers and other odd jobs. In the vast majority of that time, very few people ever saw my photographs. Photography was simply my visual diary if you will, so it always seemed very personal to me.

But then at some point, some 20 or 30 years later, finally through my thick skull I came to realize that my photography was a gift from God, and a gift to share with others. So I then began to share my work publically, selling some prints, posting photo’s online, etc… But in all that time, I had never submitted any photographs to any contests. Oh, I did think about it a few times in regards to entering some photo’s at the local county fair, but I never did. For me, for so many years, my photography was simply my personal work, and I never felt a need to get it out on a stage in front of the world.

That attitude has slowly changed. Not only do I want to share the gift I have been given in my photography, I have also realized that often I am seeing sights that the vast majority of people never get to see. Whether I am getting back into places that is just too much trouble for most others, or I have been able to photograph locations in conditions that most just wouldn’t be out in, I have come to see that others get enjoyment out of my photographs. So with that in mind, I decided to finally enter some photographs in the Outdoor Photography Magazines annual American Landscape Contest.

I waited until the last minute to enter, always finding various reasons to procrastinate. So on the night of the deadline, I am frantically uploading photos, typing up all the required information needed for submissions. In all I entered 4 photo’s, and got the last one entered at about 11:59pm… with one minute to spare! Of the 4 photo’s I entered, there were 2 chosen to finalists. What an honor. There are 28 photo’s in that made it to the finals, and I have 2 of them. I had no idea what to expect when I submitted the photos, but that is a real honor. The two photos in this article are the ones that got chosen.

Here is the link to go view all of the Finalists, there are quite a few really nice shots in the Finalist group. It would be great if one of my photos is chosen to be the Grand Prize, I already know exactly what lens I would buy with the $1000 prize money! But no matter what, it’s just an honor that out of the thousands of submissions, that I had 2 that have made it all the way to the Final round. It’s very humbling.