It goes without saying that Thomas Hawk loves photography. It also goes without saying that he writes about photography. In spite of all those givens, I still got a pleasant surprise when I saw that he took time out of his truly hectic schedule and went to the trouble of identifying 1,500 great photographers who are active on Google+. He posted the full lists on his blog and also on Google+.

What surprised me wasn’t that I was on the list (although that was nice). The real surprise was the effort involved in manually identifying 1,500 people. It takes a lot of time and effort to do that! It shows genuine interest in others and a desire to see them succeed and be recognized!

I’ve known TH since 2006. We’ve met and talked during his trip to Miami in 2010. The man is consistently nice, online and offline, obsessed with his art, works punishingly long hours, is constantly working to improve his craft and trying new things, is always pushing the envelope when it comes to photo sharing technology and is concerned with the welfare of other photographers.

While I’m fairly sure that I came across as a bit odd to him in person, because I’m much more comfortable interacting with people online, we had a nice conversation and a nice little photowalk on Hollywood Beach. Here are a couple of photos I took of him back then.

Thank you TH! Keep up the great work! 🙂