USE OF THESE IMAGES IS PERMITTED ON A NON-COMMERCIAL BASIS (BLOGS ETC) PROVIDED THERE IS A LINK BACK TO THE ORIGINAL. ANY OTHER USE IS FORBIDDEN UNLESS NEGOTIATED WITH ME IN ADVANCE. I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY PURSUED CASES OF IMAGE THEFT.

My homepage: www.johnblair.co.uk

I'm undertaking a major overhaul of my stream atm ( 2020 during lockdown). Standards have risen sharply (even mine) and I now see a lot of the earlier images are quite poor, even though they are well faved and have sentimental value.

I've been taking photos forever. I had a Kodak Instamatic when I was 12 which pretty much dates me: thanks Maw and Paw. I spent a large part of my student grant (that dates me too) on a Zenit E.

After I started earning a wage I spent £100 on a Fujica ST605n which kept me happy for many years. I was in a camera club at the time where I had a laugh lifting the odd trophy against all these middle-aged men with Canons and Nikons costing £400.

Fed up with carting it up Munros along with lenses I wasted a couple of years playing with a Pentax Zoom-90 which was a heap of crap. I dropped it in Amsterdam on some cobbles which was probably a great boost to my photography.

Some of my older photos are scans from slides. These give fantastic colour saturation, but the definition is not so good, probably because my lenses at the time were as good as shooting through a bottle.

My first digital camera was in 2000. This is the point where people usually list all their equipment, but I'm going to spare you all that boring stuff. You can find it yourself if you're desperate. I haven't got an 'Explore' set either. Again, you can find them if you look.

When I joined Flickr on September 12 2007 I thought all I had to do was take some of my best pics and stick them into sets and wait for all the praise to come flooding in.

Then I saw the standard of some of the work on Flickr and realised: must try harder! Apart from all the cat photos. I would ban those.

Time moves on. I now have my own website and a couple of good intentions:

Groups - sorry but I don't join 'post1 - comment 1' type groups. Please don't post those huge GIFs either as they'll more than likely be removed.

Also I've cut down the number of groups to try and do the rest justice.

Contacts - I genuinely try to see what my contacts have been posting once every few days.

If you add me I will normally add you too. If you're a complete novice - even better, I'll give advice while pretending to know what I'm talking about!

Everybody loves a bit of feedback and encouragement. I usually try to visit the stream of anybody who leaves a comment- so please make a comment- it only takes a minute! Don't just fave and run. But warn me if your stream is full of cats.

I'm Munroist no 695 for people who know about such nonsense:-)

I've cut peats in both Lewis and Shetland - I bet you don't know anybody else who has......

Did I mention I hate cats?

Random Quotes:

"It's often said that life is strange, oh yes, but compared to what?" - Steve Forbert c1978.

"Life's not a rehearsal" - me, in the pram.