the44mantis' photostream  

Stop press: www.johnblair.co.uk

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 on a Zenit E.



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.
The newer ones are digital. 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.

One year on. I now have my own website and a couple of New Year resolutions.
Groups - sorry but I don't join 'post1 - comment 1' type groups. I don't really like those huge GIFs either.
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. For this reason, if I add somebody as a contact and they don't add me within a week or two, I just delete them again. Some of them are fabulous photographers but then they probably don't need their ego stroked anyway......
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! But warn me if your stream is full of cats.






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Milestones:
Flickr member since 12 Sept 07
1000 Photostream views- 7 Nov 07 (55 days)
2000 stream views- 11 Dec 2007 (89 days)
5000 stream views- 17 March 2008 (187 days)
10000 stream views - 29 Sept 2008 (383 days)
20000 stream views - 16 Aug 2010

50000 photo views - 7 December 2008

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.