This image marks... {Insert the imaginary HTML code to play Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary here}... the 1000th image that I've uploaded to my PBase galleries. In line with my policy of "so subtle that it's like a whack over the head with a lead brick" symbolism, I've used my new 60mm f/2.8 EF-S Macro lens to shoot two banknotes from my currency collection. In the foreground is a 1,000 lire note from Italy, issued in 1961.

(Edit from 2023: I'm not sure how I determined that when I wrote this commentary all those years ago, but the web site https://en.numista.com/ confirms it. The bank note itself refers to some 1961 regulations, and the following year (1962) this note design was replaced by one featuring Verdi. It must therefore have been no earlier than 1961... and no later either. I've no idea where I got it from.)

I'm not usually interested in uncirculated, pristine coins and notes. I prefer currency which has lived a life, so that I can wonder whose pockets it may have passed through on its way to me and what places it has been and seen.

In this case the creases and folds of this 50 year old note are brought into needle-sharp relief by the macro lens, which shows why so many people rave about it on the Fred Miranda site and why some claim that it's almost too sharp for portraiture.

In the background we can see a 2000 lire note (issued in 1990), since 2000 images will be the next stop on this journey. I'm not sure when I'll get there but assuming that I keep my PAD going for the full year, there's another 320 shots right there.

On a more depressing note, some time in the next 7 days my car's odometer will tick over to 100,000 kilometres. That's no great amount for a car of its age, but it will still break a psychological barrier which will deplete its already meagre resale value. (Which is in part caused by an absurdly strong Australian dollar at the moment rendering new cars absurdly cheap, relatively speaking. That has in turn dumped the floor out of the second hand market.)

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