I sent this out to every newspaper and TV station in our region. Let's see what kind of response I get.
Press Release
Clintwood Photographer to Publish Photo Book Depicting Southwest Virginia Landscapes and Landmarks
From an early age, j. Michael Hill has loved art in all forms. He’s made his career from art as a tattoo artist for nearly 4 decades. During that time, he has also been an avid photographer, even going back to college (Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas) at age 36 to hone his skills in photography.
One of his goals after college was to photograph the Great Smoky Mountains and the Appalachian regions, but life intervened. Making a living stepped in the way of living out a dream. On July 5, 2013, Hill’s daughter, Candy passed away in her sleep from complications from COPD. She was only 39. The realization that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, next week, or next year prompted Hill to begin the journey of fulfilling his dream of producing a coffee table book covering the Appalachians.
“I decided to start with a smaller goal first, and began the compilation of the book
‘Mist On The Mountains, Southwest Virginia’ as my first goal.” Hill said. “From there we go on to the full southern Appalachians from the Mason-Dixon line to western North Carolina. After those projects are done, I’ll tackle the big one, The Great Smoky Mountains. We live in one of the most beautiful regions of this nation and it needs to be shared with the world.”
Hearing a story on the Today Show, he heard about Kickstarter.com and the concept of crowd funding. After a little research, the decision to use crowd funding to publish the books was made.
Crowd funding is a relatively new tool propagated by the internet. People choose to back a project and make pledges from $1 and up to fund the project. If a project is appealing to enough people, and they become sponsors, the project can be funded from their pledges. If a project fails to meet the funding goals, it dies and no money changes hands.
Mr. Hill began the campaign on Friday, July 25th, with the goal of $14000 to cover the cost of publishing “Mist on the Mountains, Southwest Virginia”. As of this writing, the project has achieved pledges equal to 8% of the goal in only 5 days. More help is needed to reach the final goal and Mr. Hill has asked the readers to check out his project and to make a pledge to make this book become a reality.
The project web address is:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1109020688/mist-on-the-mountains-southwest-virginia-coffee-ta
Shot last night!
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