The Wandering Disciple

There’s something about standing at the edge of a mountain overlook or watching the sun rise over a quiet stretch of coastline that stirs something deep within the soul. For years, that feeling has been the foundation of my work through Donten Photography—capturing moments of beauty, adventure, and the raw wonder of the natural world. But along the way, something greater became clear: these moments were never just about the places themselves. They were about the Creator behind them. That realization is what gave life to The Wandering Disciple . This isn’t just a rebrand or a new project—it’s a new direction. A step forward in faith. A commitment to not only explore the world, but to walk through it with intention, guided by God’s presence in every step of the journey. Travel has always been about discovery. New landscapes, new perspectives, new stories waiting to be told. But as this journey continues, it has become something deeper—a way to draw closer to God by experiencing His creat...

Hey, check out what we got up to in 2025!  While 2025 looked a little different in terms of our usual globetrotting, it was a year rich with fantastic local explorations and one major road trip that took us through the mountains. We made the most of staying closer to home, spending a significant portion of the year uncovering the hidden gems of our own backyard—the Sunshine State of Florida. The beautiful beaches, winding waterways, and unique nature preserves kept us thoroughly entertained and reminded us just how much we love living here. The undisputed highlight of our travel year was our epic summer road trip to Tennessee. Trading the flatlands for the foothills, we journeyed north with a specific mission: to chase stunning waterfalls and, with a bit of luck, spot some black bears in the vast expanse of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park! We spent several days hiking through the misty trails, mesmerized by the powerful cascades and the lush, green canopy overhead. While ...

  Life in 2023 has been busy.  My wife opened her own preschool and I have been extremely busy at work with the terminal expansion project.  Then in October life threw a curve when a driver ran a red light, striking my car resulting in me needing surgery to fix a broken arm.  Needless to say, the coverage has been somewhat lacking on the site and rightfully so! But despite all of the challenges during the year, we still managed to get a few good adventures in.  We visited the Keys, took a trip back home to Pennsylvania for this first time in almost twenty years and a couple trips up to the mountains for a retreat.   In February, I got to participate in a Mass Casualty Drill at work.  Every three years, airports are required to conduct a large scale drill that simulates the mutual aid that would be needed should a major aviation incident occur.  This was the first drill of this magnitude that I have gotten to witness since joining the airport ...

Sorry for the lack of content lately.  Since returning from our trip over the summer, life has gotten in the way of keep the site current.  While I have been posting the galleries online, I haven't kept up with Suncoast Rambler and the stories behind the lens.  To add to the lack of content, I broke my wrist in a traffic accident about a month ago and had surgery which has prevented me from covering all the events I usually cover like the Florida International Air Show last weekend.   On the plus, I am recovering well and have been able to get back to some normalcy.  I can type again and can use my camera on a limited basis.  My wife has been a champ helping me around the house and with some of the photography as we move forward.   Thanks for continuing to follow our photos and I hope to bring you more exciting content soon.

Since my childhood, I have always enjoyed collecting baseball cards. While I no longer buy them in masses like I used to, I still enjoy opening up a pack of cards and seeing what gems are within. I have begun a project of cataloging my large collection of cards using the Ludex: Sports + TCG Card Scanner App. During the process, I decided to also screenshot the card and maintain a digital archive of my collection for you to enjoy as well.   I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane with me as we journey through my card collection from the 80's through today.  You can view my card collection by visiting my Trading Card Collection gallery . 

We are back! Well we never really left, I just shifted gears and focused more on photography and not on writing. But I really missed writing and sharing our travels with you. So here it is, the return of the stories behind the photos.   A few months ago, I decided to take down the story portion of Donten Photography in an effort to focus more on building the photo galleries. I had recently switched my photo hosting to SmugMug in order to allow readers the ability to purchase photos as well as to protect the copyright of my photography. It was a rather intensive process moving several thousand photos onto the site and displaying them in a user-friendly format. While the migration is complete, I am still working on finalizing the display.  While this work was being completed, writing on a regular basis became too much to balance between work and family life. However I did miss it and I missed sharing our travel adventures to the readers. Now that things have settled...

While most people look to forget 2020, there was still a lot of great experiences during a rather rough year.  2020 brought us the COVID-19 pandemic which crippled the nation by shutting down the country for months and never fully reopened without restrictions, a busy hurricane season which saw us deep into the Greek alphabet for storm named with areas of the country hit by multiple major storms and a presidential election that still hasn't been officially declared.   It was one that will always be remembered. The crazy year really sidelined a lot of what was planned for the year.  We started the year out with a trip to St Augustine in March.  That was at the beginning of the pandemic but when strict restrictions began.  During the trip, Governor DeSantis began issuing orders that closed bars and restaurants and by the end of the trip all attractions were closed as emergency stay at home orders were issued.  These restrictions would remain in place in ...

As we watch another year pass by the in the rearview mirror, we say hello to 2020 and welcome in a new decade. There is a lot to come in 2020 but lets take a look back at the year that was. 2019 was pretty much a transition year for the website. I have continued working on the migration of photos over to SmugMug, a very intensive project. As of this morning I have moved over 52,000 photos to the site. I really like the SmugMug concept as it allows visitors to the site to have prints made of their favorite pictures, anything from a 4x6 print all the way to poster size. While I am not in the hobby to sell photos, I do like the idea of making it available for those who prefer printed photos. Travel was light this year. It was also a transition year in my personal life and starting a new job at the fire department for the airport.  I have spent 18 years of my life working for the fire department and this opportunity allowed me to combine my career with my love of aviation...

2018 was an exciting year for Donten Photography. The creative inspiration that found me in late 2017 continued to help me better myself and my photography throughout the year. We enjoyed plenty of photo safaris that took us throughout the Sunshine State, capturing the beauty that is found in our backyard as well as inspired me to slow down and enjoy the details, something I always seemed to miss in the past. It is this inspiration that has filled my heart with new purpose and the resulting photography has been some of my best work.  I am still learning the art of photography, but it is a heck of a lot more fun sharing it with someone that shares your same passion for photography.  Much of 2018’s travels were filled with Forever Adventures, you know the kind where you disappear with the ones you love and make memories in everything that you do that you cherish with for the rest of your lives. We traveled to Disney, we explored the animals of the zoo, got lost in natur...

Happy New Year from Donten Photography! While 2017 was a crazy year in the public eye, it was a fun year here at Donten Photography.  2017 brought us not one but two large travel adventures.  The first was the summer trip to Asheville and second was the Thanksgiving trip to New Orleans.  There was even the mini-trip during spring break which took the family to the panhandle for a tour of a few state parks.  Nestled between these trips were plenty of baseball games and airport trips making for a great 2017 in photos. The first of the three trips of the year took us to the Florida panhandle during spring break.  We did a camping trip which took us to Torreya State Park from where we branched out and visited the Florida Caverns, Falling Waters State Park and Three Rivers State Park on our quest to visit all 164 of the Florida State Parks.  That quest has a long way to go but as of the end of 2017, I have visited 32 of the 164 parks, I'd say we still have...

Another year has come and gone and while 2016 wasn't too good in the celebrity world, it was a pretty good year hear at Donten Photography.  This year saw us expand our horizons again while we crossed another two states of the visit list during our summer road trip to the Great Smoky Mountains.  Then thanks to getting a new car over the summer, we have been able to extend our smaller trips our a little further now that we are not relying on a vehicle with over 300,000 miles. It's hard to believe that is has been seven years since I began this website.  It has continued to grow over the years and as of the end of 2016, almost 6 million viewers have visited my photography.  that is only the verified visitors to the website and the photo galleries and does not take into account those who have viewed on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other sites that have featured my work.  The 6 million are direct clicks on the website and the photo galleries.  Still to ...

Sunday's Sports Page 1 I was a little surprised on Thursday morning when I received a Facebook message from the Charlotte Stone Crabs beat writer Josh Vitale. While the fact of receiving a message from him wasn’t surprising, it was the details of the message that was. He was inquiring if I would be interested in photographing the Charlotte Stone Crabs home opener for the Sun Herald. While I originally had not planned to attend the game due to a conflict with my son’s Little League schedule, this once of a lifetime opportunity left me with a decision to make. After discussing this with my family and our coaching staff, I decided to accept the assignment. Sunday's Sports Page 3 As Saturday approached, a new excitement did as well. While I am usually excited for the home opener, this one had new meaning to me as well. Not only was I gonna be there for the fanfare of the opener, but I was there in an official capacity, to photograph the game for the newspaper. But ...

Happy New Year from Donten Photography! 2015 was a great year for the website, while I did not have money to do any travelling like last year, we did manage to get a bunch of local stuff photographed. It was also a big year for me in print photography, as my works have appeared in several new places resulting in new exposure for the site and my work. Unfortunately, lack of finances really put a hamper on my ability to cover new places. So I focuses a lot on stuff that really didn’t cost much including nature photography and aviation photography. We spent a lot of time hiking, kayaking and even tried geocaching. My aviation photography continues to be one of the most popular subject to appear on Donten Photography. Over a third of the visitors to the site are here to my aviation photography. I also expanded my baseball portfolio as over the summer I was asked to join 27 Outs Baseball as a photographer. As a result, I attended a few more games as in past season. In additi...

Happy New Year and welcome to 2015! As we enter into the new year, Donten Photography will continue to bring you exciting new photography as you have come to expect from the site. 2014 was a whirlwind of a year. Traffic to the website continue to grow rapidly, reaching 4,676,441 visitors. That is double from last year and marks the second year in a row where we have doubled traffic to the site. It seems like it took forever to reach one million and ever since it has been climbing quickly. But it is hard to know the true reach of the website as the traffic counts do not include visits to Facebook or Twitter. Last year saw our coverage extend into Georgia on two separate trips, Savannah during Spring Break and Atlanta during Winter Break. We also continued our quest to visit all of the Florida State Parks. I provided photos of baseball and even return to shooting a couple high school football games. But the biggest draw continues to be the aviation photography, to date I ha...

I would like to introduce a new page to the Donten Photography website called Into the Wild.  Into the Wild will spotlight our wildlife photography taken during our travels.  You can find the collection by clicking on the Into the Wild link on the top navigational bar of Donten Photography. Into the Wild joins Donten Photography as the fourth spotlight page joining Above the Clouds (Aviation), Touch Em All (Baseball) and Boots and Badges (Public Safety). I hope you enjoy the addition and continue to follow Donten Photography.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2014 and another year of great photography by Donten Photography. As we head into 2014, we will continue to add new and exciting locations while welcoming new readers on a regular basis. Things continue to rapidly grow and evolve here at the site. Thanks to loyal readers like you, we are closing in on the three million readers mark. At the close of the year there have been 2,941,613 visitors that viewed our photos. There are now 720 galleries containing 19,901 photos published on the website. And these numbers do not count the number of visits and views to the Facebook pages in which there are no statistical records. In 2013 we brought you stories from our Staycation featuring day trips to Sarasota, Tampa and Orlando. We brought you stories and photos from a weekend camping trip to Gainesville. We ended the year with a trip to Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee. In addition, we featured plenty more trips and lots of baseball and aviation photos. T...

Be sure to check back to Donten Photography after Christmas for an exciting new photo collection from Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee. The staff at the resort has extended a warm welcome for us to cover their holiday festivities. The 4 1/2 acre resort goes all out for the holidays including some of the best holiday decorations in the state. A 54 foot Christmas tree, 2 million lights and their popular ICE! exhibit await us on our visit. We will bring you photos of all of these and much more during our stay. If you would like to learn more about Christmas at Gaylord Palms or book a stay for yourself, visit their website . (Photo provided by Gaylord Palms)

Welcome to 2013 and a new year means new adventures. This year will be a great year for the site with several changes to occur throughout the new year. Before we move forward into 2013, lets take a look back at 2012. Last year was a busy year for the site. We welcomed our one millionth reader in March and closed the year with almost 1.3 million viewers. To date, there are over 14,000 photos on the site which is just a small reflection of my photo archive. We opened two new subpages to highlight two of the more popular topics on the site (aviation and baseball). These are just a few of the major accomplishments from the past year. But as the site continues to evolve, a change is needed to help the site grow into the new year. After thoughtful consideration evoked by my wife, I have decided to drop the Around the World in Pictures and revert to a much simpler title “Donten Photography”. My original concept was for the site to be about travel however it has developed into mu...

Over the past few years, I have been providing quality amateur photography to over one million visitors to my website. I have covered subjects like minor league baseball, aviation, travel destination and much more. With the increase cost to operate the site and the expenses required to create the content, I have decided to open a fundraising account to help offset the costs. I have been providing photos and usage rights to parents of players, fans, enthusiasts and professional websites since the inception of the site without charging for usage. While I refuse to charge for use of content, I am asking for donations to help keep bringing you great photography. So if you like the work, please support the site and keep it going strong. Thank-you for your support. Click here to donate to the site.

The Above the Clouds page of Donten Photography has taken off, literally. Since the page opened a few weeks ago, there have been over 5,000 visitors to the aviation page alone. Because of its popularity, I have started its own Facebook page. If you are one of the many followers of the aviation photos, be sure to follow the page on Facebook and keep up to date with all of my aviation photos. Click here to join the Above the Clouds Facebook page.