This award is the culmination of years and years of outdoor hiking, driving, climbing, freezing, boiling, shivering, and soaking, combined with even more years in front of the computer learning, teaching, listening, trying, testing, failing, and grinding, and topped off with still more years of striving, discouraging, exploring, dreaming, focusing, desiring and hoping.

I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to give up and throw it all away, yet somehow I kept moving forward.

I want to thank my friends Chris Collacott and Serge Ramelli for their inspiration and help. And speaking of inspiration, if I had not walked into a Peter Lik Photography gallery in Los Vegas a decade ago I would not have been motivated to take my photography to the next level. That was the "aha moment" when I saw what was possible.

Don't give up. Keep moving forward!

Tim Shields