Monday 2 September 2013

Photographs and Memories #2

Dad had a good eye for a photo opportunity and, in the 1960s at least, owned a reasonably good camera. He felt that he couldn't justify the expense thereafter and made do with a series of cheap and cheerful point and press cameras for the rest of his life. Here are a couple of his snapshots from our travels in the 1960s.

 At the time, I wrote 'The best photograph Dad has ever taken' on the back of this one. 

Yours truly at the beach. Eat your heart out Gered Mankowitz.


5 comments:

C said...

Lovely snaps... and judging by your own photos posted on here before, you've inherited your dad's talent for photography.
I'm glad you explained that the second one was at the beach or I may have thought they were both 'Feeding time at the zoo'... In the nicest possible way, of course :-)

John Medd said...

My old man went in for Kodachrome slides. I know that, at a date not yet known, I'll have one hell of a cataloging task on my hands. There was always something magical about slide photography. I remember looking thro' the viewer and feeling I could almost touch the water in the pool or touch the side of that building.

C said...

Mine did too, John. I know exactly what you mean about the quality - and looking through the slide projector at them as they were beamed onto the wall with the curtains pulled in the middle of the afternoon was a big and very special event. The only downside being that they're all stored in boxes at my sister's house now, with neither of us owning a projector and not just being able to dig out them out for a casual browse any time we fancy. I guess we could get them converted digitally but what a mammoth task that will be (much like your cataloguing perhaps?)
The Swede - the colour quality is really great here especially considering their age - I don't know what happened in the '70s/early '80s though because all my photos from then went the same shade of brown...!

The Swede said...

C. Knowing Dad's sense of humour, when he took that shot of me, I'm sure he was indeed thinking 'feeding time at the zoo'! Thanks for your kind words. Like Dad, I would dearly have liked to delve deeper into photography, but, just like him, I've never been able to justify the expense of a decent camera.

John. These are among the first fruits of what will no doubt be a very long task of digitizing the best of the family photographs, slides and negatives. I snagged a great little scanner from a car-boot sale recently for a fiver and have thrown myself into the project with gusto. The parrots are scanned from a photo and the one of me is from a slide.

C. Dad had a big white screen and every so often we'd have a slide/cine show. I agree with John about the quality of Kodachrome colour - so rich and deep.

(I think our family's secret to maintaining the rich colour of these old photos must have been keeping them in that box at the back of the cupboard under the stairs for all those years!)

Old Pa's Corner said...

Cool Pics and fabulous track

Greatest Hits