Well, at least that’s to me.

My photography journey started around 2 years ago and it has been a wild fun ride.

When I first started out, I had so much fun with it. I even traveled to places where it’s just indescribable and even my shot didn’t actually do justice to the picture. But the last few months, I was having some sort of self-doubt whether photography is something I still enjoy and see myself doing again. Though I did paid gigs in the past, I always felt like I am constantly an amateur, mostly because I am currently limited with the camera that I have.

How did I pull out a paid gig then? When I did paid gigs in the past, a friend would always lend her camera to me and everyone somehow loved the outcome of it. I knew that I thought I had a shot but then looking back, I am just a pixel around these awesome photographers that I see in my day-to-day life. This type of mindset stuck to me for a while until somehow, today I decided to check out my unsplash page.

If you didn’t know what an Unsplash is, it’s a website where you can search pictures and use them for free even for commercial purposes. But if you’re on hive, I am sure many of you have used Unsplash or some type of similar site for your thumbnail in your blog. It’s where you can find awesome photos and it's free to use.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw one of my works get 26K views!

On top of that, there are people who downloaded the pictures too. I haven’t updated that page in a while and it has the same image as when I was traveling around Indonesia. In total, during my Unsplash journey I got 60K views.

This is the stats that I have as well as my top 4 performing pictures on the site.

For me, it’s some kind of achievement itself. I am an amateur and having my work received such views is something. First, I never do any kind of promotion, the only thing I do is ocassionally share them on my twitter with a few followers. Second, there are a dozen awesome photographers and they found my picture. How awesome is that? I don’t care what they’re using it for but the fact that they’re checking out my photo on there is an achievement itself. While there’s no monetary gain from it, somehow I am overjoyed. That reminds me how happy I was when I was having an adventure just to take awesome pictures and having to share it with others to see.

I definitely want to take it a step forward. I am due to upgrade my camera and am looking for something at the moment, not new but used. It’s time for me to play with lenses and I mostly want to focus on photographing nature just as the book I recently read too. Besides, I am also surrounded by scenic nature which is quite an advantage itself. Another thing I plan on doing next is adding a paypal section for donation, I mean who knows, right? As much as I don’t like paypal, that’s the only option they’re having for it. I wish they could add something else to it or I can add a crypto donation address on the about section.

That revisiting the page sparks the fire in me once again. Though these days I am also going around with my camera, because of my self-doubt, I am usually shying away from taking pictures. Most of the time, I am with my phone and just take pictures with it. Obviously, it feels different when compared to a camera. I have no trips planned in mind just yet, but I plan on going more into nature and the outdoors more than city life this year.