Dent, Cumbria

This would look really good in a 3x4 landscape, with a top crop and a slight shift to the right.
I would prefer to see the bishop's hand rather than the drainpipe on the left.

So would I have liked his left hand to be included, but it it's not on the negative.

With your skill at photoshopping, it shouldn't be too difficult to extend the house on the right and give him a Shepperton hand, should it?

If he'd performed on stage, and applause was due, then I'd have given him a big hand.
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The picture was taken (exactly 42 years ago) with Coggan's permission (he was in Dent with his wife and daughter, and my companion and I happened to pass them in the street) so out of respect, I won't subject him to any sort of prosthetic surgery.

Thought I recognised him! Fine monochome, Howard!

Thanks. In those days I did my own black and white D&P (the tanks, enlarger et al are still in my loft somewhere). It's all much quicker and easier today with digital cameras and printers (and results are better) but I still miss the thrill of seeing each image magically appear when the paper goes in the developing dish.

My Dad spent hour after hour in his makeshift darkroom but frustratingly us kids couldn't go in there and watch him at work / play. I still don't know why! The results were superb, and unlike with some of our neighbouring families, a slide show was always full of superbly taken photos and looked forward to by everyone!

Not only well-taken but (presumably) well-edited, properly projected (with a decent projector, properly focused and on a decent screen, with adequate blackout) and with a concise and listenable-to commentary.

Your neighbours' (like 99% of amateur slide shows in those days) were probably none of those things and made these shows a form of social torture. My father took cine films which were even worse.

But even if they were perfect, today (when for 2 generations everyone has had colour television to watch almost 24 a day, and is used to seeing coloured images) no one would willingly sit though a slide show or cine film.

I'm sure I would be very entertained by your father's cine film of a young Mr Bean.

So would I, atrociously badly taken as most amateur cine films were, once converted to digital they could at least have been edited, improved, and preserved. But they vanished - no one would have thrown them away, but (like so many old things like my Dinky Toy collection) they just vanished. When I last came across them, 40 or more years ago, the (even then) ancient acetate 9.5mm film stock was so brittle that it disintegrated on touch. But the lost footage e.g. of a six-year-old me on the beach in Woolacombe is no great loss to our cultural history.

I went to Woolacombe once, so I hope I didn't see you there. My mother favoured Putsborough, which was the less-crowded end of the same beach.

How are you getting on with your new movie editor, by the way? Do you recommend it?

I found the moviemaker on my old XP, and then Windows 7, quite satisfactory. But the programme on my new Windows 11 appears not to have any transition features or any way of fading the sound in and out (unless it's me not having figured it). There seems to be a trend for gimmicks rather than basic features.

Ah well, at least I've learnt how to spell 'gimmick'. I'd gone my whole life thinking it was 'gimic' until I noticed my spelling underlined just now.

Other than trying out the basics, I've yet to use it, and have no idea if it can fade sound in and out. But (as it happens) I should be using it for real in the next week or so, when I hope to video the Newport Clock in action, and to mix the footage with that of the real thing.