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In life, sometimes the greatest things happen to people when they least expect it, don’t plan it, or even think about it at all. A prime example of just that, is a man by the name of David Peterson.

Peterson is a retired newspaper photojournalist. He happens to be a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for feature photography, which occurred in 1987 and 1991.

He earned an art education degree from Kansas State while also participating on the track team. Although David had a very successful career in photojournalism, it wasn’t until after he retired where something clicked in his mind that he wanted to begin a new adventure.

Before he got to this stage in his life, he had a moment where photography became his passion.

David’s family hosted a foreign-exchange student from Chile while he was in his final year at Kansas State. The summer after David graduated from college, the family of the foreign-exchange student invited his family to Chile. The brother of that foreign-exchange student let Peterson borrow one of his cameras to use while they were there.

“I didn’t know anything about it. I just liked the feel of it. It looked and felt professional. I had taken pictures before, on family vacations, and of stuff like a brownie, or something like that, but I never held a really nice camera.” This life changing experience led to a successful career for Peterson.

Now that Peterson is retired, he and his wife have become full-time travelers. They sold their house last year and are now living out of their RV while traveling the country.

The Peterson’s even purchased a lot in California to spend time there during the cold Iowa winters.  “It was kind of a dream that we had. We had this plan, and we are now executing it. It’s fun!”

Peterson and his wife have traveled about 15,000 miles in just a year while doing about 200 miles a day. The rest of the time they are just relaxing and enjoying life.

Peterson accumulated fascinating photos during this trip, and he took some every place he and his wife visited.

Grand View professor, Doug Wells, mentioned that Peterson didn’t originally have a plan for these pictures. However, Wells had something special in mind for him.

“He started feeding us, after about two or three weeks, with one or two pictures on Facebook. We were looking at these saying, these look pretty good! The thing is, is that his pictures kept getting better and better, so I told him, you know, these would make a great show when you come back,” Wells says.

Peterson agreed with Wells and allowed Grand View’s campus to see his work and it turned out perfectly. In a way it was like Peterson was saying thank you to Wells for allowing him to express his accomplishments.

Most people will walk in Grand View’s student center on the 2nd floor and see many of Peterson’s pictures on the wall. Not all of those people will know the story behind how he perfected his craft in such a short amount of time.

When seeing this exhibit, it represents dreams, sacrifice, passion, and character for a man who simply wanted to travel the country, with no intentions of displaying his pictures for a purpose.

 

Peterson will continue living his dream through his lens while traveling the world and exploring places he always wanted to go to.