The Journey of Landscape Photography and G+

I wore out my first copy of "Photographing Southwest, Volume 1 – A guide to the natural landmarks of Southern Utah" by +Laurent Martres. I loaded up my car and went on the road full time in September 2006, as my divorce started. Landscape photography, and that book, got me through a lot of rough times in the next few years. Eventually I started a Mono Lake and Yosemite regional guide, contacted Laurent, and by coincidence he was looking for someone to write a book to cover my home turf through San Diego! It has been a massive undertaking covering that much ground, but an amazing experience.

Most of the project has been accomplished while participating on Google+. G+ has a unique ability to handle what I call "long form social media", so I can include more information with posts. It also has the unique circle functionality so I can manage notifications and interaction by subject type, including geography. Add in Events for organizing things like photowalks, and Hangouts for capturing instructional demonstrations, and you have a formidable combination. Thanks to the excellent collection of technologies brought to fruition by +Bradley Horowitz +Yonatan Zunger +Dave Besbris +Vic Gundotra and no doubt hundreds of engineers I may never see or meet, we have powerful tools that can bring us together.

That concept of bringing people together was particularly effective from the beginning thanks to excellent community managers such as +Brian Rose, who valued and encouraged photowalks. Not only was I introduced to hundreds of photographers on G+ through photowalks, but as they occurred in Death Valley, Yosemite, the Eastern Sierra, Anza-Borrego State Park, on numerous state beaches and elsewhere, many G+ photographers were with me, in a very literal way, on the adventure of developing this book.

I've been a little busy this year sprinting done the final stretch to get this book out, but I'm looking forward to getting it out the door and getting back to more photography, and catching up, preferably in person, with many of the people around here that I haven't see in a while.

I didn't want this post to go on forever, so I've placed more on my blog. I'm sure that I'll have a lot more to say as this project winds down:

California Landscape Photography Guide Book
http://activesole.blogspot.com/2014/09/California-landscape-photography-guide-book.html
#landscapephotography #California #travel