Good day all wildlife lovers. In this post I am going to tell you how we go to this point. be warned, it is going to be a long tale from my childhoood all the way to now. Back when I was a child, I was involved in the cubs(before you join the boy scouts in South Africa, you first are a cub). This was from the ages to 7-11. Once you turn 11, you then upgrade to joining the boy scouts. Naturally this involves nature and the outdoors and such. So this is probably where my love for anything outdoors started. We would go hiking, fishing, build projects( towers, bridges, catapults etc) and do all the things that boy scouts taught us to do. When it was time to leave school and go to university, I went the route of game ranch management. seemed like a natural fit, but unfortunately I did not actually enjoy it as much as I had hoped. While I loved the outdoors, I was to entrepreneurial for the environment and still am to this day. It has always been a struggle for me to do a job where its do as your told and never have a original thought or another way of doing things. But I did discover I enjoy outdoor photography, particularly animals and wildlife. So whenever we went on game drives, along came the camera. I started with a bridge camera, and eventually upgraded to a Canon DSLR. A entry level model, but it was good enough for me. some of the photos I still use today were taken with one of these cameras. Thankfully pictures last forever and cant get old, there is always someone new to appreciate them. This was while working on Amakhala game reserve in the eastern cape of South Africa, and at a guest house near the Addo elephant park. So this went on for a few years, I started working on Zazzle and would add more and more designs and photos as time went by, eventually getting it up to 50 dollars odd a month for a few photos and some designs from time time that sold.
and then 2010 came around and things changed. My father passed away in a car accident that year and life had to take a different route. I had to put the wildlife photography and designs, back then known as gods eye wildlife photography, on the shelf and focus on meeting the current needs. expenses had to be covered and such, so got a job as a retail space planner. it covered expenses while I was living in my dads old house and got me through 2 years while we sorted out the estate. once that was wrapped up, I had to move out of my dads house as the partner got it in a settlement of his estate. and due to the financial needs of moving out,during this time my camera equipment was all stolen as well, left the space planner job to work at a foto shop. It increased the salary by 50% so was worth it. Did that for a few years, moved onto a different photographic sales job, which doubled the salary. So everything was going well. The original space planning company I worked for called my back and offered me a job to return, and it didnt mean I had to work weekends. this was now 2015 odd. I stayed there for close to 5 years. But after two failed promotion attempts, no feedback on my future from the company, I got a offer to be a systems analyst at an accounting firm. this was now 2020, and I stayed there for two years until Dec 2022. At that point I had to try giving the photography a go again as I had all the photos still, had a few designs still, had not opened zazzle in about 5 years, but life changed again due to my wife going through a battle and so needed to leave the accounting firm for the better of my family and my peace of mind. And this comes to now. We have started this website, reopened the Zazzle store, listed on Redbubble and Etsy, started marketing Our African wildlife photography gifts and products through a partnership with GoSeeDo. and that is hopefully going to bring exposure to the work we are doing here. So we offer our African wildlife photography on a number of products which you can see here.We have items such as:
Mousepads
Puzzles
Shirts
postcards
and more available.
We thank you for your continued support, and this goes out to everyone across the world who has bought our products. We appreciate everyone for it.
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