Re-Discover Washington

"Re-Discover Washington" began as a crazy idea that kept revisiting me and would not leave me alone until I took a decision to realize it. How? I had just moved to Washington, MO, did not know a single soul, began volunteering at the Visitor Center and saw the need for an online resource that has all the information about events happening in town. Living downtown and not driving, I also realized that so many local people never visit the family-owned shops, so I combined my love for photography with my dream to be a journalist and set up a blog with the goal to help the downtown thrive/make friends/improve my skills. I called it "Re-Discover Washington" - the idea was to interview the shop owners downtown, create a photo-essay-style blog posts with images from their stores and share their stories to encourage people to visit/support them. The blog gained in popularity through the Facebook page I created for it and thanks to it I got to meet so many amazing people who turned into wonderful friends. A lot of my time and attention was devoted to it between 2011-2014 and I even won an award at the Missouri Main Street Conference! "Re-Discover Washington" over accomplished its initial goal and right when it was at its peak, another idea caught my attention and I let the blog go with lots of love and gratitude! I was going to leave it online and simply not post anything anymore, but ended up deleting the whole thing because it became outdated and I did not want to confuse people. However, I still have all the images I took for it and I donated copies of the full resolution files to both the Historical Society and Downtown Washington Inc. Enjoy a not-so-small selection of all 5513 that made the final cut below! "Re-Discover-Washington" was truly dear to my heart - it took a life of its own and taught me so much! Very grateful to the downtown community who embraced me and the blog as their own!