I'm very grateful to everyone who has taken the time to look at this site - I've really enjoyed making it, and intend to keep adding to it (and hopefully improving it) in future.

Part of the original philosophy was simply to present the photographs without any comment or explanation. They ought to stand up for themselves! In addition I really didn't want to follow the normal 'home site' philosophy and bore you with my ideas about religion, pornography and acupuncture!

Having said that I'm getting an increasing number of emails asking questions about the site, it seems unreasonable not to answer them, so here are the answers to a few common questions - if you want more information, I'm happy to supply it, my email address is below (please don't use it for junk mail though!).

All the photographs have been taken with digital cameras, I have to admit to gadget mania, so I've tried a lot of cameras. You can usually tell which camera has been used by looking at the file name (at the bottom of each photograph).

Olympus E10 - files beginning with P prior to October 2001

Canon G2 - files beginning with IMG_

Olympus E20 - files beginning with P after October 2001

Nikon D1X - files beginning with DSC_

Nikon Coolpix 5700 - files beginning with MDSCN

Kodak DCS Pro 14nx - files beginning with D2CF

Olympus E1 - files beginning with M_

Generally speaking I've found that the fine jpeg setting produces adequate results, I'd like to have the time and energy to use RAW, but I haven't! The only exception to this is the Kodak 14n, where shooting RAW is pretty much obligatory

I usually find that 5Mp cameras will produce a good A3 size print from high quality jpeg - the exceptions seem to be large group photos, and also landscapes where more detail would be good - the new Kodak DCS - 14n sounds like the answer to my dreams!

I've got this down to a fine art - but it's all a matter of taste.

I create a new folder for each year, with sub-folders for each month. Within the monthly folder I create a new folder each time I download photographs to the computer.

After downloading photographs I use Graphics Converter (on the Mac) or ACDsee (on the PC) to run a slide show of the new photos - deleting anything which doesn't seem to be both compositionally and technically satisfactory.

I then use Photoshop 7 to go through the shots one by one. Worthy shots will then be modified in photoshop - usually I do nothing more than a levels adjustment and sometimes a little dodging in of shadow areas (I intentionally under-expose my photos; you can never recover burned out areas in digital, but there's always details in the shadows).

Having satisfied myself that the photograph is now as required, I save it with the original file name prefixed with the letter M (for modified) at the highest jpg setting.

I'll then resize the photo for the internet (I use 700 pixels wide for landscape, and 600 pixels high for portrait). Then I'll use unsharp mask, usually 100% at 0.7 or 1 pixel.

Finally I'll add the frame and then save the reduced file in the parent folder (i.e. the folder for the month).

If I need to print the file I can go back to the modified file I saved above, sharpen it as required and print it.

This is very simplistic (I'm a simple guy). I hesitate to give such basic information, but such as it is, here it is.

Some people hate these (I'm never sure), but I'm often asked how they're done.

I always use photoshop, but this could be done just as easily in any of the other photo editing software programs.

1. Click on the colour chooser for the background and choose a light colour from the picture using the dropper.

2. Choose Image/Canvas Size and increase the size of the canvas by 2 pixels in the vertical and horizontal.

3. Click on the colour chooser again and choose a dark colour from the photograph

4. Choose Image/Canvas Size again, and increase the size by 30 pixels.

Obviously you can change any of these parameters as required.