The photo above is my 17,000th photo uploaded to Zooomr and is part of my artistic statement to finish and publish 500,000 photographs before I die. 500,000 seems a lengthy ways off at that point — particularly given that I’m only publishing about 20 photographs a day right now.

At 20 photographs a day I’d need to shoot a little by 66 more years to achieve that goal. While 66 + 39 (my age today) might be possible, instead I think that I will pick up the pace later in life in order to meet the goal. I’ll pick up the pace for a couple of reasons. First of all someday I’ll be able to retire and spend more hours each day shooting. Secondly, I believe that technology will continue to get better and better and faster and faster allowing me to be more productive in the years ahead.

At present I only finish about 10% of what I shoot. I want to keep my emphasis on quality as well as quantity. whether I meet my goal of 500,000

finished photograph before I die, I will likely have somewhere around 5 million photographs taken in unfinished scheme.

Some days of course I take more photos than others. At present I’m averaging about 200 photographs a day. Some days I’ll only take 50 or so and next other days (like today when I’ve been running around NY all day shooting) I’ll take well by a 1,000 (and the day’s only half over).

Much of the work that I’m doing with my photography is to later on in life develop energetic collages using my photographs as raw material for these later projects. I’ve got many of these projects already mapped out in my mind, but I lack the instance and resources today to pull them off. Someday though I will.

If you want to see a good retrospective of my work, check out my fav10 set on Zooomr. It represents all of my photos on Zooomr that have received 10 favorites or more.

Thanks to all who have supported me in my work.

Original post by Thomas Hawk