Howard Somerville's photos

Our last Summer

Lalibela, Ethiopia

Kodachrome 64 transparency

The Eskdale-Ravenglass railway line at dusk

The heyday of the colour slide was from the late 1950's to the 1980's. Slide evenings were part of every club and society's main activities, and visits to friends often included a show of holiday slides. Too often these were badly taken, badly projected and badly presented, and became notorious as a form of social torture. But nothing could evoke oohs and ahhs quite like a good slide. The image quality that even the earliest Kodachrome film could provide was remarkable; the definition, dynamic range and colour vividness far exceeding that of colour prints of the time. But technology moved on, and even before the day of digital photography, every home had colour television and the general public became saturated with life-like colour pictures and slides lost their novelty and uniqueness. [Photo: Godshill, Isle of Wight, taken in 1967. Kodachrome II.]