Author: danrouth

Greensboro, NC based commercial and editorial photographer.

Belated Mother’s Day

Family, Poetry

(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

My son Devin is in school at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and he wasn’t able to get home for Mother’s Day. He’s a poet, so he was able to send a few belated verses to his Mom in the form of a limerick.

“So I have this very swell mama
who kept me from childhood trauma
and though she can nag
like a withered old hag
without her I’d drown in life’s drama.”

(Poetry copyright 2010 by Devin Routh, used with permission)

He made his Mom laugh.

Caldwell County Plow Day

Agriculture, Farm, Horses


Take several acres of bottom land along the Yadkin River in Caldwell County, North Carolina. Add about 20-25 teams of the most gorgeous mules and work horses you have ever seen along with some serious farmers and it’s amazing how much ground you can turn in just a short time. Images are from a plow day gathering of the North Carolina Draft Horse & Mule Association this past weekend.







(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Five Hundred Posts

Business, Photography

(Photograph copyright 2010)

Last week I passed a milestone (sort of) on this blog in that I passed 500 posts. That’s about 2 years worth of posting five times a week. Guess it’s time to take a look at my blogging efforts and see where I am. I started my blog as a marketing effort for the most part and it continues in that vein. I post mostly images with the occasional prose, because that’s what I do. I take photographs, professionally. I have for some 34 years.

As a marketing effort, my blog has had mixed success. I wish I could say that perspective clients are running all over each other trying to book me, but they aren’t. I have booked jobs as a direct result of someone who found me online, but with the recession hitting the Greensboro area hard, work has become harder and harder to find, especially new work. I’ve also found that in order to make a blog work, you have to market the blog itself through social networking, forums, etc. So, in order to use a marketing device, you have to market it, and so on; something that quickly becomes very time consuming.

All of this marketing is on top of the time and effort it takes to produce content. After all the main reason for posting my work is to show folks something that I think is worthwhile seeing. Producing a “good” image every day, every week takes a lot of work, and I try not to post anything that I don’t consider good. Granted, some images are a lot better than others, but I do attempt to show something every day that will stand on it’s own. Some of my images come from actual jobs, but many are produced just for the blog.

So, where does all of this lead me? I will continue to post as much as I can. Any marketing success is dependent on how long you can continue it. I will also try to continue working on my craft, because when all is said and done, that has been the biggest benefit I have gotten from this whole experiment. I have made myself go out and shoot content just to be shooting. Even after 34 years, it’s amazing what you can get from practice. I think I’ve learned some things visually, and I sure have enjoyed doing it.