So, I did a post before how reddit has increased my followers substantially. I, as usual, had shot something I was pretty proud of and shared it on Reddit. Before my highest upvoted image on Reddit had been 59.9K upvotes. This one surpassed… It currently has 63.2K of upvotes and over 700 comments. When I say Reddit is truly an undervalued place to share photographic work, I mean it!

Again, Reddit does dish out a healthy dose of criticism so it might not be for everyone. It took me a long time to let things go. When people are wrong on Reddit they do not give one shit about your ‘proof’ or anything else, their opinion is right and that is that. It can be infuriating but it is was it is. This is, of course, not the case in every matter. Alongside all of that there is more positivity than negativity, in this case. People were very complimentary throughout and I gained some avid fans which is always wonderful.

The main questions I got were ‘Where is this?’ (often being asked how I got to Koopa Troopa beach)and whether it was photoshopped etc. Generally there are a good dose of people who think it’s outrageous that it is photoshopped… but honestly what isn’t nowadays? Yes I edited it! And I’m proud of that. Spent too many years learning photoshop not to bloody use it. So yes, I got rid of my footprints and I added the sea in on the right hand side of the image, to make the image what it is.

Also what drone I used - DJI MAVIC PRO 2

What was AWESOME was that 4 different people approached me about taking images for their potential novels, or where they could buy this image etc. So it actually ended up generating me some income which was unexpected but ace.

I have to credit my partner Donovan Jones for this, I had the idea yes but there was no way in hell I could have pulled this off without him piloting the DJI drone and being patient with me and my demands, bad posing and dragging him to the beach at 4am to try and catch the sunrise. Thank you.