It's the eyes, I think they look as though he is far away, maybe even slightly sad within his own thoughts.

A powerful portrait.

When I read what you were thinking of doing to these superb Pentax lenses, I positively blanched.....drill a hole in them?

The focusing rings shouldn't be so stiff as to cause the lens to unscrew, but I have known it to happen.

Looks good to me. I suppose this means I can't buy it off you for some give away price......

My cousin paid £2000 which included a very large heavy album with its own briefcase to hold it. The presentation was excellent and two photographers were in attandance all day and evening. It was let down by the quality of the book printing IMO, but the general audience for the images were completely satisfied, which I suppose is what counts.

Personally I don't do many weddings, far too much like hard work. But I will do them if I know the people involved or when pushed to! I have to confess that I do enjoy doing them when I get down to it...The time spent is far more than a day at a wedding though, as all the images are individually adjusted, plus we tend to do some bonus things like slide shows in Pictures2Exe, which tend to please the couple.

I wonder what you think the value is of two of us spending at least two very long days - one at the wedding and one processing images - and maybe longer if we think it needs it?

I'm curious as to what value a few of us would put on that service? What would you think is a fair price to pay? :

There are clearly some differences in perceptions here.

Tim, when you were offered a "set of prints" for £350.00 - £500.00 what exactly were you being offered? What size and how many? And was that including the shoot or was that extra to the basic service? Did the photographers have shops or work from home?

It's hard to judge what it means without some more details.

From a tax point of view we can make up to £9000 (I think) per year selling things we've already owned and are just getting rid of. These fall under the tax radar completely. Many things we sell at a paper loss, but it's irrelevant as we don't want them any more.

It's when we buy to sell that the problem arises. Then we are trading as a business and the tax man will want a cut.

It's not all one sided though as registering as a Sole Trader enables you to be employed and also be self employed as well. The self employed part enables the charging of costs against tax, in proportion to business use against personal use, so lighting, heating, telephones, broadband, petrol, etc. all get a share counted in.

I went on a very helpful HMRC course that explained clearly what needed to be done and what to claim for.

I don't think eBay are making changes for the sake of it, rather more having to respond to various government requirements and regulations. They will also be making changes to "head off" some threatened government legislation as the noose tightens.

I suspect the problem is that rogue traders are perceived as not paying tax and the spotlight has turned up fully on eBay.

In the midst of all this, they will also want to maintain their profitability.

The days of an easy place to buy and sell freely like a global car boot sale may be numbered.

If my suspicions are close to the mark, then there will never be an alternative as the newcomer will be subject to all sorts of red tape right from the start.

An image is the photographer's property, expressed as Copyright, just as is the text of a book we have written or the content of a film we have made.

Some people don't bat an eyelid over stealing what they think is there for the taking, but they may not appreciate that costs and creative input need buyers to survive.

If we didn't buy CDs or downloads, who would finance making albums? There would be no professional standards, no large orchestras, just a mass of music made in someone's kitchen with a computer. No major world tours if there's no cost for tickets, a reduced spectacle if there's no chance of DVD rights for the live concert....

Going back to wedding photography, there are good amateurs and lousy professionals out there, but in the end you get what you pay for. And the good professional, producing superior work, can't finance his or her organisation if the pictures are stolen for free.

You'll have gathered by now that I don't buy pirate CDs or DVDs!

There is plenty of free software on the web to reclaim lost images from your card.

Try to get the shots from the card before you take any more shots and risk overwriting the information. If that fails, sometimes formatting the card before recovery can work better.