A Trip Down a Photographic Memory Lane

A gentle remembrance of how I came to like photography

Hi fellow humans,

When I was five years old or so, we took a family holiday to France and stayed in a little gite near Paris. It was around Easter time so the weather wasn’t brilliant but we had coats. I am not sure how long we stayed for, it may have been only a long weekend, at most a week. On the ferry over my father gave me an old camera to use. An old Kodak Brownie 127. He showed me how it worked, greatly empathised that opening the back would destroy all the images (I was a commensurate fiddler of knobs, levers and the such like). It’s a pretty simple camera, look through the back viewfinders, frame your subject, hold the camera steady, tuck your elbows in at your side, hold the camera with both hands and gently squeeze the small button until it clicks, wind the film on until it also clicks with the round wheel.

He was quite the photography nut and had even been offered a job at the Daily Mail as a photojournalist before he became a teacher, husband, and a father. He sent in a mocked up photo of a UFO over the Houses of Parliament. Back then they couldn’t fault the photo. My father told me that after he sent the photo in to the newspaper they contacted him and said if he admitted it was a false photo he would be on the front page, if he didn’t it would go inside the paper somewhere, and offered him a job. I think had it been me, I would have accepted the job.

When I find the newspaper article I’ll add that too. Anyways he still loved photography and developed his own film and printed his own pictures. A process that we kids continued.

My mother and my brother rising a photo they have printed in the kitchen in our cottage, circa 1987/8

Of the photos I took on that trip only 3 have survived, I expect I wasn’t the best photographer at 5 years old. I found the wind on mechanism fiddly and often didn’t quite manage to operate it fully. I was rather excited to be given the control of this little brown box though. The first picture was of my brother on the ferry. I managed to get a good 75% of it as sky.

I did manage to frame things a bit better later, my father giving me more advice as the days went by. This next one was the park outside the gite which I remember as a long, low, unassuming, white bungalow. I don’t remember much else about it. I was taking a photo of the ducks, and so failed spectacularly with that but managed a decent view. What was strange about this photo when it was printed was the odd ghost like Indian lady floating near the pond. Obviously a double exposure where I hadn’t wound the film on properly but we hadn’t encountered anyone like this so we were all flummoxed

The park across the street from the gite with duck pond, and strange ethereal woman.

The last photo to survive actually won me second prize in the first photography competition I entered when I got to secondary school - not bad for a photo I took aged 5. Again an accidental double exposure. The Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower stacked on top of each other. I thought there was another one of Notre Dame but I can’t find it now.

The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triumph superimposed.

Just to brag I also won the first prize but with a much more recent photo of pottery kilns. And so my introduction to the world of photography happened and began a life long interest. This is my most recent favourite. Nothing special just textures and shadows, but I like it.

Cobbles, tarmac, texture, and shadows.

I’ve moved on from that camera now as you would expect after 50+ years. I’ve moved on from film and my editing is done on a computer not under the enlarger. I have an old Canon 40D and an also old Canon Powershot GSX. I like the 40D for its interchangeable lenses, I like the Powershot for its portability.

Anyways, there it is. A wee memory gambol. What’s your favourite photo you have taken?