Photo site

I am not sure how much I have communicated on this matter (I have certainly written a lot on the manxathletics.com site) but the site where I have been hosting most of my photos for the last 8 or 9 years, fotopic.net, went down earlier in the year.

I've not had the time or the energy to remove all the links on the photos page of the Parishwalk.com site.

I subscribed for a premium service at zenfolio.com back in January and started uploading most of my photo collection.

I planned to launch the site on 1 April partly as a nice round target date and partly as a decoy to my planned April fool.

I have now uploaded 58,000 photos including the Parish Walk and many other athletics photos and my other interest, Manx views. I still have several thousand left and some design work for the website. Whilst uploading them I have found that I wasn't as organised as I thought I was and had lots of work to do in this area too.

I've put back the launch twice to 1 May and then today but I'm still not ready. I will be before the Parish Walk.

There are several reasons for the new site.

Firstly I had to find a replacement for fotopic.

Secondly I think I can organise them better with a new site.

Thirdly the new site will have a shopping facility. I have never charged for my photos. It is my hobby and an extension of what I try to do with my websites by allowing people to enjoy the sport. But I do spend time emailing copies to people and answering questions about them. With the new facility you can still view them as much as you like without paying for them (and there will be full size copies) but you will have to pay to download a file without a watermark. You can also buy photos of all shapes and sizes or buy personalised gifts through photobox.co.uk

The charges will be modest and I will pay the subscription costs and all costs associated with running the site. The markup between the prices paid to Photobox and Zenfolio will be donated to charity.