Hey all,
I hit a personal mile stone tonight by taking a decent picture of M42 (I know, god I know another Blurry M42) but I was so happy I made a little album of my progression over the past year odd.
http://imgur.com/a/u5qE6
I'm so proud, I can safely assume a large majority of you started this as a hobby because of pictures like this (and the other obvious awesome aspects of astronomy). The pictures that we all look at from the 'professional' amateur astrophotographers are magnitudes better obviously but to me, this is why I started spending time and money on this hobby. There is no turning back now!