Just realised that it’s now over four years since I launched theviewfromthenorth.org. I know that four years is neither here nor there, as we only tend to celebrate anniversaries that are divisible by 5 for some reason, but slowly but surely, interest has grown in the website, and it’s moved from being a place where I put my photos online through being a showcase for my best stuff, to more of a project to photograph the industrial landscape of the north of england, to bits of the industrial landscape I find interesting from all over the UK. And steam trains. OK, so the focus of it has always been somewhat confused, and I will someday create a separate website just for my railway photos, but I just don’t have the time at the moment. But what the heck, it’s my website, and I get so blinded by strategy, objectives, and god knows what else at work that in my own time I like to freestyle it as I’ve only got myself to please.

But as I approach the landmark of a million page views, (that’s divisible by 5, so I’ll have to think of something to celebrate that), it’s nice to look back and see how far I’ve come as a photographer. It’s nice to know read the dozens of fascinating messages I’ve had from viewers about how it’s provided inspiration and information, encouraging guest book comments (I delete the ‘your picture are sh!t’ ones) and the friends and contacts I’ve made through the site, and this gives me the encouragement to push on and keep it going for as long as I can. So, if you’ve not visited the site before, please have a look, and if you like it, tell your friends, tweet it, ‘stumble it’, like it or whatever else you can do with this new fangled social media stuff!!