Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Saturday 16 April 2016

Captured and Captioned


Thank You Mummy!
Listen!
These photos of my big brother are stuck in one of my Mum’s photo albums, with neat captions written by my late father. It’s very possible that they were polyfotos, which would have been a sheet of forty-eight different shots. The best one were often given away to friends and family and these woud have been the ones that my parents decided to keep. Dad brought his artistic flair even to the family album, decorating the page with scrolls and writing each caption in his beautiful italic script. The album page hasn’t reproduced well so I am going to caption the pictures using 21st century technology instead. Dad imagined what was going through his one year old son’s infant head.

What a funny ickle puppy!
Dashed Funny Old Man!

Who’s that?
Day dreaming



I think I’m going to cry
Aeroplane?

As a child I would love to look through these albums, and this page was one of my favourites. It seemed to me that Dad was telling a story; something he was always very good at. This is just one hour, in one day of my brother’s life. He’s in his seventies now and in his lifetime we’ve moved on from polyfoto to digital technology. We don’t have to rely on the photographer’s studio anymore to tell a story, we simply use a smartphone. We can take one photo and turn it into a portrait worthy of an Old Master, with the click of a few buttons.

Join us this week at Sepia Saturday, where there will be multiple images a-plenty and at least one Old Master (Alan). Our own Photo Sleuth, Brett Payne, wrote in fascinating detail about polyfotos in this 2013 blogpost.


14 comments:

  1. What an adorable set of photographs of your brother, and I can imagine the pages with your Dad's artistic flair. Similar polyphotos were taken of me, but seemed to be cut up, and I now have only a few. I have never come across any of my younger brother.

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  2. Such a sweet little lad and I love the captions done by your dad.

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  3. The look in the one captioned aeroplane is exactly the same as he gives now!

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  4. Cute shots, indeed! And love the buttons that pin his pants to his shirt...I have shots of my brother in outfits like that...kinda like "dumb mittens" but for pants, I guess.

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  5. The captions are very creative and your brother is darling.

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  6. These are great shots of a boy by his dad, who must have loved him very much to give the decorative captions to each picture. You can tell they were having a good time together!

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  7. Wonderful photos of your brother. What a doll

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  8. Polyphotos are absolutely lovely. I wish more people had had them done, they're a terrific way to capture a little child's world.

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  9. A lovely set of baby photos. I have A similar set, taken when when we spent a year in Cambridge and put together in a little booklet, from which my mother chose the one she liked best for an enlargement.

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  10. I know we have access to the technology now, but with all our smartphones and digital technology, our Flickrs and our Pinterests, will we ever create something that has such a lasting legacy as that album page of your parents. Great photos and captions that transform them into something even greater.

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  11. The photos are so well done and the baby plays along like a pro. Good to keep these memories and show them from time to time. I think I keep to many photos hidden away in albums or in boxes instead displaying them.

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  12. Those are great fun and made me think of when my best friend and I used to go through photo books when we were young and decide what the people were actually thinking. Your family album is priceless.

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  13. Great photos, & the captions complete them perfectly! :)

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