Ordinarily my monthly digest post would bring you news of the latest additions to the WME galleries, but March 2011 will instead go down as the month when West Midlands Exploration ceased to exist. To borrow the boating analogy from one of my previous posts, March saw the good ship Fotopic sink without warning, taking down WME and all other galleries with her and as yet there's been no sign of anyone manning the lifeboats.
To say this turn of events has been disappointing would be something of an understatement. I had invested five and a half years of patience and energy into building up West Midlands Exploration as a worthwhile pictorial record of the region only for it all to disappear seemingly overnight. Then again, it's hardly the end of the world - we are only talking a collection of photos after all, and more recent global events tend to show up such piffling concerns for what they are.
The final analysis will show that I added my last photos to the fotopic site on March 9th, a shot each of the 256 and 259 routes calling at Stourbridge Bus Station. This meant that I had reached a total of 2,359 images collated across my galleries, broken down as follows: Wolverhampton 435, Walsall 208, Birmingham 330, Dudley 262, Sandwell 180, Coventry 80, Solihull 112, Staffordshire 299, Worcestershire 90, Telford 68, Warwickshire 45, Shropshire 58 and Exploration Extra 192. I was proud of how the galleries as a whole were shaping up and I believe they contained some attractive and interesting photos, some of which had already become quite historic as bus routes changed or buildings got demolished.
It is then time to draw a line under what went before and to look towards the future. I have set myself up with a Flickr account and will soon commence the mammoth task of transferring my images onto my new photostream. For me this is quite exciting, starting again and seeing which direction my photos take me in this time - I'm not sure how things will develop but I will aim to keep you informed right here on the WME Blog. I shall update my blog links once the Flickr account becomes more organised, but for the time being you can access the photos at...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wmexplorer
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