Finally, @papa-pepper is going to feature another user in a post to help spread the word about a great steemian who may have otherwise been overlooked by others. I've planned on doing this for some time now (I first contacted @daveks about doing this on September 15th), but now I've finally got it done, so here it is.

@daveks

The first time that I had the pleasure of meeting @daveks was the spring of 1992, in Munich. He was looking for someone to make balloon animals at a surprise party for his 3 year old niece, and I was in need of an excellent photographer to take some shots of my balloon animal art in progress. We met in a back alley behind a local pub at about 10:30 at night, hoping that our activities would not be noticed by the local authorities...

Wait, that wasn't @daveks... nevermind...

This was the image that @daveks used for his first post, just over two months ago. He got two votes and no cents, but he had officially arrived on steemit. As a photographer who didn't write much on his posts that was new to the platform, it took a bit for him to get noticed at all.

In fact, it took him 13 posts to get more than 4 upvotes and actually get paid for a post. The payout on this post was $0.02. The photo from that post is the one above.

Finally, when he posted the image above called PINK SUNSET he got his first "real payout" of $96.41. Actually, he has never topped that payout. It was the second time that I had noticed and upvoted a post from @daveks, but it would still take a few more posts for me to offer some helpful advice.

When I upvoted his GIANT DRAGONFLY post, I finally noticed the "rookie tags" that he was still using. That was his 29th post on steemit, and he tagged it in photography, giant, dragonfly, and waskesiu. Now I knew that photography is a good tag to have a post get noticed in, but who checks for new posts in giant or waskesiu?

If this guy was going to get some more attention from the whales, he'd need to step up his game a little when it came to tags. Always trying to be one to be helpful, I shared a photo of my own, and a comment.

I did a photo-post on some dragonflies a little bit ago, this is one of the shots.

You should post some of these in nature & outdoors to get some more traffic. Also maybe photo.

He replied:

Great shot, and thanks for the tips

So I added:

You are welcome. I think it would help you out a bit with exposure.

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He's kept at it since then, frequenting posting excellent shots like the one above. Most of the early posts were just the title, photo, and tags, so I suggested that he add at least a few words. His newer posts have some great background information, and you can sense a little of his personal flavor in his posts.

Though @daveks just hit over 200 followers and is fast approaching his 1500th post, I still wanted to do his "name in lights." He's definitely growing and has not let a lack of payout affect his posts or his commitment to steemit.

In fact, when I saw transfers to his account from blocktrades, I thought for a moment that he may be a whale in disguise. Actually, he is not the whale with the username "blocktrades" but was transferring in some STEEM POWER.

To share just a few more things about the user known as @daveks, he is currently living on the prairies above North Dakota, up in Canada, and they have already had their first snow for the year. Also, he lived in Osaka Japan for 5 years and Banff national park for just over 5 years as well! I'm not sure if he'll ever get around to sharing those stories with us, but I know that he will keep sharing some amazing photos with us.

If you are looking for another great steemian to follow and upvote, @daveks is an excellent choice. The photos are amazing, the posts brief enough to easily fit into your busy day, and he always wants any rewards that he gets paid out in 100% Steem Power. Here's a few more of his photos that I like.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-peppers

ALL TRANSFERABLE PAYOUT FROM THIS POST WILL GO TO DAVEKS.

FOLLOW

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Awesome Handcrafted @papa-pepper logo kindly donated by @vlad - Thank you!!

OPERATION TRANSLATION logo provided by @oecp85.

(click link above for more info on Operation Translation.)

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The majority of the images used in this post were photos taken from the blog of @daveks.
The title image, dragonflies mating, screenshot, and proof-of-peppers were my images.