Over on my other blog How Would You Know… I have been taking part in the
A to Z 2020 Challenge and as this one is on the subject of photography, I am posting a link here https://how-would-you-know.blogspot.com/2020/04/r-is-for-remembrance-photos-for-purpose.html
Marooned by Covid 19, I have dusted off the blogs which I have not had time to frequent over the last few years. What has happened photographically in the interim? I have upgraded to Canon Eos 1200D which adds a new level of complexity, buttons to be learned etc. but for a while I had no “proper” camera but fortunately, phone cameras progressed in leaps and bounds to the point where they quite spoil you for “real” cameras. HDR processed in-camera for example – very useful for surveying dingy building sites.
Or more artistically –
However there are limits to a camera with a lense the size of a petit pois and if you want to do macro, depth of field manipulation and the like, you do need a grownup thing with a bag for all the gizmos…
Lastly, A colleague who had recently bought just such a grown-up camera, created a MeetUp group to go taking photographs in company. Two trips under our belt and the virus strikes but not to be put off, Alex set us an indoor photography challenge on the subject of Books – this was my offering with a little help from my partner…
Remember the days of getting prints back from the Chemist/film developer/photo shop? Seeing what you had photographed maybe months ago. A pleasure which has largely disappeared with the instanaeity of digital cameras. Here are two girls enjoying that magic moment to such an extent that they have literally sat down in the gutter. Ironically snapped on my smart phone…
I shall never enjoy that magic moment on “Antiques Roadshow” where a member of the public gasps with surprise as the expert gives a valuation way more than they were expecting for the antique they have brought along – I have already had my moment and nothing else is likely to surpass it,,,
Some years ago when I lived in Ireland, I went to jumble sale in Sligo and happened on what I thought was an old accounts ledger. Without even opening it I asked the price and handed over £1 – it was still Punt then – pre-Euro. When I did open it a few minutes later, I was delighted to find that it was an album of 19th Century photographs and as I flicked through it, I realised that it was probably from Kilronan Castle, a then roofless ruin near to where my sister and brother-in-law had lived. When I showed it to him, Willie agreed and said that he believed that there had been an early photographer in the family that had lived there. I resolved to take it to the National Library of Ireland – Photographic Archive and if it was part of a body of work, to donate it to them to be with the rest of the work.
As you can see, the pages were elaborately decorated with pen borders – sometimes Celtic knotwork and in this case the date and place are given however like so many family albums since, the compiler of this album has not seen fit to name anybody – on the assumption that everybody in the family knows who is who… This may be true but people pass on and we are left with a collection of the nameless. Undoubtedly this is a family album and for the several years I had the album in my possession, I enjoyed speculating about who was who and who was the compiler. My money was on the girl on page one placed centre page between whom I guessed were her mother and father. There were other pages that betrayed the sentimental nature of youth such as a page of pets and also the passion for categorisation as in the pages of estate workers and indoor servants below.
There were also holiday photos – also labelled and dated, unlike the people. Look at the detail below in this scene of Rome…
It was not until I had returned to England that I finally got around to contacting the National Library of Ireland and sending them the above scans and they confirmed that the family who had lived in Kilronan Castle, were the King-Tenisons and both husband and wife had been pioneer photographers. Also, they would be delighted to accept the album into the collection of work they had of the King-Tenisons. I offered to post it and aghast the lady said they would collect it the next time they had someone over to England. A few weeks later they emailed saying I would have to obtain an export licence for them to bring the book out of England. I duly downloaded the form only to find that a valuation was required and the form was only for items in excess of £10,000! I rang the NLI and said “Don’t panic, I’m still going to give it to you but I need to know what the album is worth?” ” Well we obviously haven’t seen it and its condition but we think about £25,000!”
Cue staggered moment!
Well eventually I got the export licence and the NLI sent someone to pick it up but that wasn’t the end of my involvement. Sadly I had to return to Ireland for the funeral of my dear ex-brother-in-law Willie and took the chance to go to the Photographic Archive to view the rest of the King-Tenison collection (my album was in conservation) and they also passed on the name of an American academic who was writing a book about the couple. I made contact with Lee Fontanella and on one of his last research trips before publishing his book we met up at the archive and examined both my addition to the collection and other work that he had previously viewed. Lee outlined his book which is to tell the story of how this apparently cosmopolitan couple travelled around Spain for several years presumably before they settled down in Kilronan to raise a family. They hobnobbed with the Spanish aristocracy up to and including the queen, taking photographs of their estates and making a living by doing so.
Lee concurred that the album I had found was probably the work of the daughter and that certain pages were probably the discarded catalogue thumbnails of her parent’s work.
I hope that if economies improve and there is one day an exhibition of the King-Tenison’s work that I might play some part in the curating of it – perhaps exploring the theme of the shortcomings of family albums from this one henceforth, to label their subjects…
So the mobile phone is 40 years old today – Happy Birthday! Whenever a new gadget, or programme or App as we now most often engage with, is announced as the next best thing, I am initially skeptical but I am truly fascinated to identify those things which really have, or are going to change our lives and the mobile phone is one of them. Used solely as a phone, it has meant we can be contacted up a mountain (if you’re lucky) and in certain advanced cities, even on the underground. No need to recourse to a phone box or the reception desk phone or the kindness of strangers – contact anywhere any time…
Remember the StarTrek “communicator buttons” those natty badges they wore on their lycra costumes that the y could communicate (via the ship as switch board) with anyone on the network. We may once have envied the ease of communication but now we have gone way beyond! Yes the mobile is a little bigger and doesn’t double as a lapel insignia but it is now a self contained computer with access to others and with the knowledge bank directly (not just asking the ship for answers) and of course – A CAMERA!!!
People have a car accident these days, they whip out their mobile phones – not just to call the police but to take a photograph of the evidence – like skid-marks, before the they get contaminated. Below is a photograph of my gas meter and not only could I produce a date stamped photograph of it but send it by email direct to whom it may concern. Or a video, to an acquaintance I’ve never met in the flesh on the other side of the world!
There are a lot of pictures on my computer which though they certainly could be taken on my Canon SLR – probably with greater technical quality – I would not have been bothered to get the beast out of the bag, power up, stow the lens cap in my pocket and then frame and shoot. So hereby way of celebration, is a small selection of Thing I ONLY photograph with my Phone!
A hand bag to become the inspiration for a blog post
http://how-would-you-know.blogspot.com/2013/02/alas-oor-yorick.html
…because I had no other camera to hand
Photos & Me - A History 
