It was not until I had uploaded 50+ images to this site that I realised that l AM a photographer, or at least I was in a previous life when most of my images were taken. I am neither artistic nor technical when it comes to photography – more of a ‘point and shoot' merchant. However, I think that I have an eye for knowing what could look good in a small window and/or for providing a good memory aid for a long past event.

I simply enjoy taking pictures either to visually chronicle events and places, or for my own research purposes.

I am one of the many who were hugely disappointed and disgusted by Yahoo's ill-conceived revamp of Flickr in late May 2013. I found it to be crude, shabby, ridiculous and illogical. Plus Yahoo initially said they were closing Pro User accounts! ....and that "the name/term would disappear. So I changed my name to Pro User and joined Ipernity.

As Flickr obviously became aimed at teenagers and mundane cell-phone pics, I tried diverting all my attentions to Ipernity...which was a far smaller but far more suitable to me for displaying collections of photos on an uncluttered white background. In fact very similar to the old Flickr which made it so popular ....with plenty of white space, as in photo galleries. I was initially delighted with Ipernity and thought I was there to stay (as 'Polyrus'), but from the beginning of 2014 petty childish bickering by dictatorial members and poor responses from the management team led to closure of so many good groups. Then I had one foot in each camp and I was undecided about the future, but spent 99.9% of my time on Ipernity as it was an easier interface and I considered it a far friendlier place.

Sadly Ipernity had been in the process of closing and many groups closed. Even two of my contacts on there ganged up on closing a group which I was an administer of so I became active here again...until another photographer-friendly site can light my fire.

I am not interested in the numbers game, so unless you have a clear common interest with the type of photos I publish here on Flickr ...and are not already following multiple thousands of members, please do not waste your time or mine by adding me as a contact, as I will not respond. Likewise if your photos were all taken with a cellphone or your contributions are littered with a stream of tacky graphical icons in the comment section. We all need a few faves, otherwise an image is considered naff. Yet, I will most likely not respond to those who just fave the image without bothering to read the description and that applies to most of my 'faves'.

Since returning to Flickr at the beginning of 2020, after being hounded off Ipernity, on a monthly basis if not every week I am receiving requests from members to use my old images on a website or in a book. Please do not waste your time or mine by submitting such requests. I have invested thousands of pounds and thousands of hours enhancing old slides and/or negatives, and I am not a charity. I just enjoy freely sharing images in the hope others will enjoy them. If others do enjoy my uploads, I hope that they will leave the occasional comment and not just on 'fave'. It would look odd to have no faves, and we all need a handful for each upload, however I will not reciprocate if you never leave comments. I comment on most days, time permitting, so I'm only being fair. I also leave far more comments than I receive, whilst I endeavour to reply to all credible comments.

07 Feb '20: A very interesting article below, regarding Flickr, its history and current state:

The rise, fall and resurrection of Flickr: ferdychristant.com/the-rise-fall-and-resurrection-of-flic...

Thank you for reading this.