jchanders

The day before yesterday this gallery passed the mark of 100 000 pageviews. After nine years on DA this may not be such an extraordinary success, but I am still deeply impressed by so much positive attention. Ever so many of you have followed my photographic activities since I started here in 2005: 2086 people have been watching my gallery, and the 1515 pictures have been viewed 1 308 268 times. The picture most viewed has got more than 40 000 views. These numbers are quite unbelievable to me. Let me once again say that I am most grateful for them.

Alas there a quite a few friends who have left DA in the meantime, but to my great joy so many new ones have joined the field. And I am very happy to find so much beauty here again and again.

While I have been less active at times, this gallery now has my full commitment again. Together with my jchanders-gallery on Redbubble (where generally I post different pictures) it provides a lot of pleasure and encouragement for me and so many of you.

Fortunately my health is no longer a source of acute worrying at the moment. And so I hope to be able to share more of the beauty of nature with you in the time to come. I may travel less than in the past, but the immediate surroundings of Hilversum and some trips during the year will hopefully keep providing enough interesting material. And there is luckily still some good stuff hidden in the archive, only waiting to be rediscovered.

More than two years have passed since my last journal here on DA. I had transfered most of my photographic gallery work to Redbubble, and my DA galleries just idled on.

But now I have made a new start in November 2013, 25 new submissions have been added since and next to various old friends who are fortunately still around, I have found a great number of new people whose work is fascinating. So quite a few new names have been added to my watchlist. Several of you have added my gallery to their list too. And to my great surprise and joy I was given the great present of a Premium Membership of 3 months by LUCILALEYLA. 

So I am most grateful for the good course on which I find this gallery during its first weeks of renewed activity. I intend to keep this gallery in good shape in the New Year, and hopefully you and I will find a lot of joy in each each others pictures again and again. Whether I also shall manage to get my other DA gallery on Esperimenti going again, remains to be seen.

As some of you have asked about this, I can fortunately tell you that healthwise this last year has been a good one for me, just as the one before. That was a great relief after the difficult years before.  So here too I am now hopefully looking ahead.

Many, many thanks for all your wonderfully encouraging reactions to my operation news of July. I once again appreciated it very much that so many of you showed so much caring and empathy. Please forgive me for not reacting any earlier, but though I have had a reasonable recovery and no serious problems in the meantime, but I have also had very little energy. So I just did not manage to get into the photographic mode yet again. We also enjoyed a short holiday at the Kiel Fjord in August, but there too I did take only very few pictures. Still I hope to become more active again in the weeks or months to come. So let us hope the best.
With my very best wishes to all of you,
Juergen

The next operation

Two days ago the tumor in my left kidney was targeted by a procedure they call Radio Frequency Ablation. This way of treatment is much less invasive than even the so-called non-invasive operation as I had in January for the tumor in the right kidney.

The treatment was done under anethetic, but I only had to stay one day and night at the Leiden University Hospital as everything went according to plan and I was feeling quite ok very quickly. Hopefully there will be no complications in the days to come and both kidneys will keep functioning well.

I am very glad that this barrier has now been taken too, and I do hope that my energy and inspiration will improve in the weeks and months to come. After all I have been a rather poor participant on the galleries in the past period, mostly not feeling up to a more active role and having only very few new pictures worth showing in store.

I hope you are all having a good summer. With my very best wishes,

Juergen

Hi friends,
This morning I at last could go home again! I am very glad about it. I am still very weak, and so I just write these few lines to keep you informed.
Many, many, many thanks for all your encouragement and compassion!!! Whenever I could go down to the internetcorner at the hospital, I could pick up waves of strength from so many of you!!!
Most gratefully,
Juergen