I have a framed picture collection on my wall that was from a Havasupai back-packing campout in the mid ‘80’s. I did this trip with some friends and my two sons when they were still in school. It is always on a highly visibility wall no matter wherever I am living. Why? It brings back great memories of not just that trip, which was spectacular, but also my sons when they were young.
There was a time when this kind of photography was a big pain in the posterior. It required not just semi-fancy cameras but film and developing. Thus, you had to wait for typically a week or so before you got to see whether the image was even any good. Or, whether the picture “turned out” as we use to say.
These days our high-tech devices (phones and such) have made it ultra-easy to get pictures and you can see immediately whether they “turn out”. Also, there are great digital device ways (specialized mini-TV’s and computers, if you will) to display those pictures prominently on tabletops and walls.
Use to be you would take tons of pictures and end up with only a couple that would make it out of the ‘print envelope’ into a frame. These modern devices allow you to cycle through all or just selected ones continually, like screen savers on your computer.
To that end, it occurs to me that some might enjoy having my Go Camping! Calendar images as screen savers. These images are from camping trips I have done mostly in the stunningly beautiful Arizona outdoors. I do this calendar and thus the images in the hopes of motivating my camping clientele to get out there and Go Camping! Why not use them as screen savers on your computer?
I have done motivational calendars/planners for over a decade. These images have mostly been extracted from videos taken on my camping trips. As some of you may know, I often additionally make a video that shows you the exact frame in context used for the calendar specific still images. I don’t always do calendar videos but here is a playlist of ones I have done over the years: (Please skip the #*@!& Youtube adds between each video! They benefit me in no way. This is just Youtube exploiting it’s clientele....Gerrrrr..)
Believe it or not you can still actually get the old calendars from my website by visiting this blog post:
I am sure you noticed I do insert my own promotional content into these calendars. Actually, this is my motivation for doing them. Hopefully, you get some really helpful information and camping tips as well.
For what it is worth, calendars were historically used extensively as promotional instruments for various businesses both big and small. Anecdotally, in a great book called “Blue Highways” by Henry Least Moon he refers to the number of calendars displayed in a restaurant as the best gage of how good the food is. ( i.e. a five calendar restaurant will have great food!)
This age of digital photography has really curtailed promotional calendar practices although some of us still do them. I do them more as a planner so people can plan out their camping and vacation trips for a given year. (I should have the 2023 version ready next month.)
Here is the best example of calendar promotion I know - Arizona Highways.
This year, I think I am going to do a toned-down ‘screen saver’ version of my calendar you can use on your computer.
Here are the November and December examples of that - Go Camping! Screen Savers
Taking pictures will help you shake those great memories loose even many years from now. And the best pictures are taken when you Go Camping!
