Watch the Birdie!

I have just received some beautiful photographs of my gorgeous grandchildren, emailed to me from Spain. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a photograph is 'a picture formed by means of the chemical reaction on sensitive film', but it goes much deeper than that. Without the shadowy images of years gone by captured on little bits of card, I would never have known what my maternal grandfather looked like, as he died when my mother was small. In fact, my mother wouldn't have known either. When I was about seven, or eight, (I think), my dad went through a phase of developing his own photos, and we would be snapped in our dressing gowns, a budgerigar on a shoulder, with mum reading to us, or my sister and I playing in the garden. He then spent ages in the bathroom with towels jamming the door so that no light could show through while he developed and printed them under a special light and strung them up on a makeshift line held in place by mum’s clothes pegs. I still have some of those old memories!

I can spend hours looking though my old photo albums. Remember the ones that had the peel-off plastic sheet that 'stuck' your photos onto the page? They worked for a few years, but eventually the plastic lost its ‘stick’ and peeled off, and all the photos fell out! The little sticky corners that held the photos in place seemed to be a lot better, remaining even after the photo was removed and leaving you wondering what on earth had been in that square! Especially if there was an odd caption handwritten underneath. Something like, ‘Gosh Horace, what a brave thing to do at your age!’

Mine looked exactly like this! (Thanks to Google!)

My first camera was a 'Brownie Box' that had to be held in front of me while I peered down through the lens and hoped that it didn’t move while I pressed the button! The film had to be wound on by hand but there was no ‘safety catch’ in case I forgot to do that in my excitement to capture something, and multiple pictures could be taken on the same bit of film! Somewhere I have ghostly photos of snow on roofs (I just love those old chimney pots that are so characteristic of old London), with my granny floating in the middle of them, sitting in her chair in her lounge! Odd but interesting! The last Brownie I saw was in a museum, how technology has changed.


Then I moved on to a Kodak Instamatic, the very latest invention, with the cartridge film that simply dropped into the back of the camera, and was ready once the film had been wound on to the first ‘click’! The problem with all these ‘old fashioned cameras’ was the waiting time while the film was professionally developed and printed before you could see how many heads had been chopped off, or whether you were actually in the frame at all! My mum was good at that and seemed to always point the camera to the side, so we knew which ones she had taken, we were often captured leaning sideways so that at least a bit of us was visible! Looking through some old photos last week, I found several envelopes containing negatives, but the photos that they belong to are long gone, probably posted to family or thrown away over the years. I held them up to the light and tried to work out the whose face was grinning back at me, pale where it should be dark and teeth like black holes!

The flash was attached to the top.

Now, thanks to my daughter, I have the very latest in digital technology! I can take a photo, have a look, delete it immediately if it’s hopeless, or download it onto my computer and send it to friends and family. All in the time it takes to boil a kettle! My dad would have been fascinated with the way things have changed since his dabble into photography. How to explain to him the idea that a photo can be taken and sent across the world in minutes by a mobile phone??

My new, streamlined camera!

My mum had a ‘granny’s brag book’ with photos of her grandchildren that she proudly showed to visitors. I have loads of photos of my children and grandchildren, but they are all hidden in my computer and if anything had to happen to my computer, I would lose them all! (I do back up every month though, so  all would be well.)

But, even techno-grans like me need to have something in a frame, so every now and then I download one onto a stick (get that computer jargon!), take it off to the local photo lab and have it printed.

I have to have something to gaze at while I think of my next blog!