This 'About' mallarky reminds me of the opening line of 'Catcher in the Rye'. In other words, what do you need to know? Probably just this:

I set up these pages as a way of ordering and yes, also sharing, the railway pictures I've taken since purchasing a digital SLR in 2009. I now live on the Hants/Dorset border, so the focus (geddit) is predominately on main line steam on the Bournemouth line, the Mid-Hants Railway and the Swanage Railway. Increasingly modern transport snaps have also made it on here. Although modern buses are not my main interest, I seem to progressively snap these more and more (perhaps a triumph of availability over interest). Given that I live between the ports of Poole and Southampton, shipping should feature more than it does; perhaps something for me to work on. If I lived nearer to the canal network, I fear I would bore the Flickrsphere with canal pictures, but as it is, canal snaps are few and far between. In addition to the Hants/Dorset bias, with a daughter who lived in Guildford for just shy f 10 years and a son who was at Uni in Bristol (at UWE), transport in those two cities also featured. More and more, I seem to upload scenery snaps, etc, but by and large, I'll spare you the family snaps. I have, however, found Flickr useful for keeping a garden diary, albeit primarily for my own reference purposes.

In addition, I'm slowly getting get around to scanning the colour prints I took in the 80s and the slides from the 90s on to Flickr. Up until 1998, I lived in South London/Croydon, so with the older snaps, the emphasis is on the K&ESR (where I did some volunteering in C&W) and the Bluebell. The contemporary transport snaps from that period mainly reflect living near London and that my parents then lived in East Sussex, although work allowed some limited travel at that time. Uploading these scans can be a bit random, making my photostream a bit higgledy-piggledy, but hopefully, as albums complete, they provide some order.

Realistically, there is the family, a garden, a house and other interests to consider, so don't expect to find on here a record of every tiff and turn on my patch.

I know I'm now meant to say that if you copy any of my pictures, that I have special skills and I will find you, I will block you, I will reap a terrible revenge … but in reality I don't give a tinkers. I doubt anyone wants to copy any of my efforts, which are at best 'record shots', but if you want to do so for your own non-commercial use I'm really not fussed. However, I draw the line at people selling my stuff on eBay or similar sites and I guess if you do copy something a comment saying so would be nice.

With the digital snaps, other than some basic cropping or conversion to black and white, I'm not much into manipulation, so what you see is pretty much straight off the camera. Sadly, the scans of my prints and slides do seem to need manipulation, and I used to use Aviary for this and now use Movavi following Aviary's demise. I'm not a fan of Photoshop, but that is just my opinion!

Finally, those of us enthusiasts who just press shutters owe a debt to those that roll up their sleeves at our heritage railways. I'm retired now and I always thought that would see me return to railway volunteering, but when push came to shove the distance (and the cost of the Sandbanks ferry) has put me off and I've ended up volunteering on local conservation sites instead. However, I'm more than happy to record here my gratitude to the volunteers on our preserved lines.

Clive

Highcliffe on Sea