It struck me last night that I hope that folks don't think I am trying to monopolise all this photo upload business, or having some sort of late-in-the-day ego trip. Absolutely not so.
Fact is, some time back, that doyen of mines and mining, Roy Fellows, suggested I should upload some golden oldies onto the site (poor chap did not know what he was letting everyone in for!).
After uploading a few, a few days back, LeeW commented that the early ones were shot before he was even born, which made me sit up think what an old f**t I was and that perhaps there may be a good reason to continue with the task, the subject of which has been of great interest to me since my teens.
I certainly don't claim the images as being anything special (I have seen some wonderful stuff on this site, shot by people with an innate sense of composition and lighting and which makes me regret that this digital technology was not around thirty or fourty years back. But then it was unheard of to be able to carry a telephone - nay, mini computer - around in your pocket then). But in many cases the pictures do capture a time when things were very different on the ground, and underground too. There may be a some individuals of similar vintage to me - I know of at least one - who have fascinating material in their archives but who have never got round to digitising this and sharing it with like minded people, on such and excellent as this. Perhaps it is because it involves quite a bit of time commitment - scanning slides and negatives being a rather tedious business - rather than simply uploading 'ready made' jpegs.
Next April I will reach the three score years and ten anniversary and this has been a bit of a wake up call too, before the Grim Reaper comes a'knocking (he's not been invited!) and my negs and trannies perhaps end up in one of Mr Biffa's containers, if my lads don't want them. I don't know if PDMHS have plans to put, for instance, Harry Parker's images on line - I do hope so - and, in my view, these, being a part of our historical archive should be free to at least view, if at all possible. I don't think history should attract any commercial money making baggage!
Got Spanish, American and Australian mines to think about eventually so be warned!!
'Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again' [Henri Cartier Bresson][i]