I have been shooting digital, kinda-sorta, more or less since the early 2000's. It was only in 2004 that I got serious about it with the purchase of a Canon EOS 300D. It was only in 2007 that I got even more serious and created an account on PBase to display my photos.

Photo uploads to PBase are plunging in number year on year, and there's no reason to believe that it isn't shedding members and therefore revenue at the same rate. Many people who I once follwed have long gone.

I had planned to stay to the grim end since $23 is not a fortune and there is a decent, if shrinking, community on PBase. I'm not so sure now since what I regard as the unprofessionalism, laziness and rudeness of the owners is starting to really niggle at me. The main reason that I'm still here is that I have to update a LOT of photos before I can upload them anywhere else.

I'm pragmatic enough to not want to be left high and dry if (when) the death of PBase happens.

I've set up an account on Flickr (SmugMug is too much like a secret society and 500px seems to be the "home of overcooking") and expect that when (what I think is) the inevitable happens, I'll go there. ("Here", if you're reading this on Flickr.) I'm adding all of my titles and descriptions to the photos' IPTC Core metadata so that when I upload them to any new site I won't have to waste time creating the captions or descriptions. Good sites (including PBase) read those automatically, although better sites can also read lens information, which PBase seems to be incapable of and I expect always will be. All of the comments that I've received over the years are still vulnerable to loss but I haven't figured out a way to handle that yet. For the moment that's either "hope" or "rely on Google caching".

I don't want to tie myself to any one hosting site again so any sharp-eyed regular visitors may have noticed that I'm now watermarking my shots with a personal domain instead of the PBase one. I don't plan to host my shots there - it would be too much work and a community of 1 is hardly a community - but at least it's a central navigation point which can point to wherever my photos may be hosted in the future.

As part of my site I created a couple of slideshows; one image from each year of digital shooting, ideally one which I have not uploaded previously. Not necessarily the best shot of the year but a diverse range of shots and locations.

(Yet somehow Canberra has been missed despite it being a prominent destination for me for several years now.)

In any case, I thought I would put them up here as well. It's less a gallery than a sampler box.