Well that was a particularly painless week of selling off lots of gear. Cash in the bank and new stuff on it's way...
So heading off in a slightly different direction, as I said last time I think the Image Library business is suffering from it's own success, in fact the whole digital image online look at me sharing showing off thing has got to a point where either an Armageddon moment or some other amalgamatory (?) conjoining expiration moment will descend upon us. Still wondering why Getty don't just scoop up flickr instead of all this 'Artist's Pick' tosh and make it work as a cheapo licensing operation, now as I've said before 'pinching' images off the net is so bloody easy these days and even tickling out the watermarks is now just a swish and a click, we've got the Digital Orphans bill rumbling along, good idea if you have a read of this stop43
So not only is there too many images on the net and people pinching them  but if you fail to tag, watermark add metadata and generally chase down any referrers coming on you sites who are dodgy (yandex and baiduspider based searches) and of course disable any download options, make images 'small' and low jpeg quality and add on the appropriate licensing options then quite frankly it's just like leaving your front door open with a big Neon sign flashing 'Help Yourselves, the doors open' look after your images, make sure everyone knows they are yours and keep the front door shut and switch off that bloody Neon sign.....

Well after all the organising, chivvying and prodding of Manchester Photowalkers I not only get my reward in Heaven but a Lightroom 4 e book from Peachpit.... lots of stuff on the Peachpit site look really useful, have a browse if you have the time. I chose John Lees as the winner who should also be getting his e book soon as well. So I can now draw a veil over the Photowalk proceedings, I probably took on far too much with the tutorials but I think most folk had a good time , not forgetting my appearance on BBC Radio Manchester during the walk.... So I think I might be doing a smattering of mash ups over the next few weeks, something I've done in a half arsed kind of way but after a bit of work I think I'm now capable of knocking out something that dosn't look too shabby.....any how have a good weekend, I'll be getting over excited in York Railway Museum tomorrow, must dig out my old Ian Allen books to see if there are Museum pieces that I saw working back in the '60's.... TTFN

So I've got a smattering of Nikon gear up on ebay, all good nick and working and very keenly priced with a buy it now option and I have people watching...watching...surely that's what you do when it's an auction...hmmm maybe it's folk thinking of selling and getting a bit of knowledge of what the market could take...either way I'm having a clear out...pre christmas whilst folk still have a balance on their cards to max out. Flash, lenses and a rather nice 'as new' mount cutter which I've hardly used.... I'm importing some new specialist gear from America as it works out far cheaper than buying the stuff over here even with a $230 freight charge.... Here's a useful link if you want to buy anything overseas of a specialist non ebay type thing  http://www.dutycalculator.com/  Very useful and maybe an eye opener if you are buying from a country of manufacture... So a bit of Lightroom 4 work and then a lot of screen recording for the new class based tutorials. New venue found so I'll be putting up the dates over the next few days. I'll be putting up a new gallery 'Outer Hebrides' which will be a mono collection of rugged coast bits based on 2 summers of shooting, there are some crackers in there I can tell you....

My favourite Wide angle panorama so far....