Deadwood, South Dakota

Few places I've traveled have been quite like Deadwood. Nestled in the Black Hills of South Dakota, this small town made popular by names like Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, is now a tourist hot spot full of casinos and saloons playing up their wild west history. Between the old facades along main street and one or two saw dust floors, it's easy to buy into the experience.

It was 2007 when my friend Andrea and I explored the town as part of our road trip to Mount Rushmore. I was vaguely aware of the HBO show Deadwood at the time, but it was actually my visit to the location that sparked my interest in the program and not the other way around.

We wandered down main street stopping at Saloon No. 10, the location where Wild Bill was shot and killed while playing a game of poker. Enjoying a few drinks we viewed all the old photos that lined the walls. They made it easy to picture the time period when Deadwood was just a dusty collection of saloons and brothels and South Dakota was simply the Dakota Territory.

A drink in Saloon No. 10 where Wild Bill was shot.

It was then up the hill to the Mt. Moriah Cemetery. There we were able to see to the grave sites of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, as well as enjoy the panoramic view of Deadwood in the valley below. We toured the cemetery with a newsprint map, taking care not to lose our footing along some of the steeply sloped paths.

Deadwood was a slice of history masked with modern tourist traps and Disney-like branding. Still, it was the type of setting that conjured up images of classic westerns, black and white photographs, and legendary gunslingers. There were no road blocks for kicking back and the casual atmosphere made it a blast to explore.
 

I became hooked on the HBO show once we got back.

O Plastic Tree

It's been the same story for over 6 years now. The first weekend of November my Christmas tree goes up, the decorations come out, and the holiday flicks get some air time. It goes back to my second year in film school when I put up a mini-tree in my dorm room.

I've always been a sucker for Christmas and the idea of having a tree in my dorm seemed like a cool piece of kitsch and novelty. My roommates were quick to show interest, and friends soon started to realize after the second year in a row that it was kind of becoming my thing. It made sense to put the tree up early back then because the semester would end at the start of December and I'd be on my way back home. If you wanted to make it worth it, it had to go up in November. 

Now out of film school, the tradition continues. My collection of film and television themed ornaments along with personal mementos from trips and friends now make my tree even more of a spectacle. The plastic limbs are filled to the brim, so much so that last year the base of my tree broke from the weight of the ornaments - this years replacement is much sturdier.

What can I say? I have Kevin McAllister syndrome when it comes to Christmas trees. You can see a picture of this years tree above and the time lapse video I made in 2006 of one of my dorm Xmas trees below.

In the Audience

To create a blog or website based largely on personal promotion and the ability to share your work is something done with a great deal of optimism. We hope someone will care, will read, will watch. And as views start to trickle in in those first few months you begin to find a target audience and a couple of people who continue to come back to check out your latest posts.

Editing Luke took a lot of work to get off the ground over 3 years ago, and while I still see a lot of work to be done in this project, there have been some pretty incredible milestones along the way. To discover that people are voluntarily coming to see your original content is the dream of any artist/filmmaker/blogger/etc. Now just shy of 100,000 blog views (and over 1 million video views) I wanted to share some of the details about the audience that has viewed Editing Luke since it was created in 2007.

At the time of this post this site has been viewed in 150 countries in over 6700 cities around the world. Not surprisingly given my content and location, over half of all my visitors have come from Canada and the United States (roughly 52%). I've always been writing my blog in Canada, so it's also not surprising that my readership has been much higher in the provinces that I've lived, I've written about, and have close friends in.



North American Cities (above) - In this map the cities with the highest number of total views since this blog was created are shown. My hometown of Medicine Hat is the largest dot.



United States (above) - Here the top 10 states with the highest number of visits have been ranked. California and New York have a significant lead over the others, which given my travel posts and film student/related content (not to mention the population of those states) seems on target.



Europe (above) - This map shows the percentage of all visits to Editing Luke that have come from these specific regions of Europe. Off all these countries, the UK has the largest single contribution with 3.77% of all traffic to my site.



The World (above) - Finally, this map shows the density of visits from around the world and select percentages of some of the more popular locations where people come from. The darker the color the more visits. You can see that North America has a substantial lead, but there are also strong pockets of viewership from Southeast Asia and Europe. The beige countries represent no views from those locations - a few people have actually visited from Greenland though!

It still amazes me that so many strangers could be viewing my site sometimes, but it feels incredible to know that I've been able to create something from my experiences to share. Often you doubt that anyone is reading, but if this is just the beginning of things to come who knows what the numbers will say in another 3 years?

I guess I'll have to keep working at it to find out. Thanks for visiting from your part of the world!