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One Shoe Diaries

A story on Randall Louis Hamilton, Creator of the One Shoe Diaries Book

"Their all-around professionalism to me is the best part of dealing with them. And also instead of feeling like I am just sending my book to just another company, I feel that they treat everything as if we are a team. The customer service is outstanding, I never feel as if I am in the dark on where we stand with an order. They seem to always answer any questions I have within a very quick timeframe."

Randall Louis Hamilton


"During their travels they started noticing lone shoes beside the road and they began to be intrigued by the phenomenon."

One Shoe Diaries

In October of 2004, award wining photographer, designer and artist, Randy Hamilton and his wife Sharon lost their residence on Pensacola Beach to Hurricane Ivan. Instead of treating it as a disaster they decided to treat it as an opportunity for adventure, and set off in a motor home to travel the United States.

During their travels they started noticing lone shoes beside the road and they began to be intrigued by the phenomenon. “How? Why” he asked himself. “A shoe isn’t something that falls off you and you don’t notice it. Why only one shoe?”

So he decided to photograph and catalog the shoes they came across and thus was born “One Shoe Diaries” website and book. The shoes are left in their original state, and are not altered or moved before photographing them.

In all, Randy photographed 153 shoes along Interstate 10 from Florida to California. Those photos can now be seen in his book “One Shoes Diaries” which is available from PrestoPhoto.com. The book highlights the One Shoe Diaries accompanied by short anecdotal stories about the circumstances around the discovery of each shoe and their adventures on the road.

When it comes to a favorite image in his book, Randy says that that it is “a tough decision. But if I had to pinned down to a few they would be the high heel in Hollywood (shoe #128), the cowboy boot in Texas (shoe #67) and the panoramic shot I got of Big Sur, California.”

After looking all over the internet for an affordable way to self publish his book, with the quality needed to reproduce a photography driven book such as his, Randy came across PrestoPhoto and was “so impressed by their samples and pricing I had to give them a try!”

“Their all-around professionalism to me is the best part of dealing with them. And also instead of feeling like I am just sending my book to just another company, I feel that they treat everything as if we are a team. The customer service is outstanding, I never feel as if I am in the dark on where we stand with an order. They seem to always answer any questions I have within a very quick timeframe.”