Month: December 2018

And So To Bed

The great thing about Sepia Saturday is that it gets you digging. I don't mean digging outside in the cold and wet winter months, lifting shovel-fulls of clogging dank earth; I mean digging through your collection of old photographs in search of a match for whatever theme image that infuriating chap who chooses the theme … Continue reading And So To Bed

Two Pictures, Three Girls

My post today features two images from my family photograph collection. Between them they feature three girls - and three methods of identification. The first photograph is the later of the two, and probably dates from around 1928. It shows two teenage girls with a Japanese umbrella and the hint of a painted Japanese scene … Continue reading Two Pictures, Three Girls

Christmas Shopping In Bradford

We caught a bus to Bradford yesterday to do a little Christmas shopping and to look at the wonderful Victorian architecture that still lines the stone city streets. A few days ago I came across an old copy of an 1893 Yorkshire Trade Directory - before you ask, yes it was lodged up my back … Continue reading Christmas Shopping In Bradford

The Bailie In Question

Les Cloches de Corneville was a comic opera popular in the first half of the twentieth century with amateur operatic societies in Britain. I have never actually seen it performed, but as far as I can gather it had something of a Gilbert and Sullivan feel to it, and like the various comic operas of … Continue reading The Bailie In Question

There Really Should Be A Word For It

Vocabulary has always a tendency to lag behind technological progress - which is why we have a word for a merchant who deals in candles made out of sheep's intestines ("tallower" in case you are interested), but no word to adequately describe those people who use social media to tell you what they had for … Continue reading There Really Should Be A Word For It

Negative Thoughts : Square Bales

This is a scan of a negative I took over fifty years ago, in the mid 1960s. I can date it because of the rest of the shots on the strip of negatives - but even if they had not been there, I would have some idea of the date by the shape of the … Continue reading Negative Thoughts : Square Bales

Lost Relatives Awaiting Collection

This is another photograph in my series "Pictures From Nowhere", which features photographs that have somehow come into my possession through fair means or foul. All I know about this particular orphan image is a date (which someone has kindly pencilled on the reverse) - 23 July 1946. It shows a splendid group gathered outside … Continue reading Lost Relatives Awaiting Collection

Having A Good Time

Walking In Torquay So what do we know about this photograph? We don't know who these two are, that's for sure: they appear in album of someone else's photographs, someone else's memories. We do know, however, that it was taken in the quintessential English holiday resort of Torquay.  And we have a date - 1928: … Continue reading Having A Good Time

Experiments With A DNA Camera

Stories abound about so-called primitive tribes who would shun photographers in the belief that cameras can capture the spirit of the photographers' subjects. As with many such stories, it is of dubious veracity: but if such tribes ever did exist I have a degree of sympathy with their beliefs. Nothing comes close to capturing the … Continue reading Experiments With A DNA Camera