The Picture Within - The Picture Within

Over on my Picture Post Blog I am currently featuring some scans of medium format negatives I took about thirty or forty years ago. I tend to scan an envelope of negatives per day (12 negatives in total) and it is always a thrill discovering what will emerge when the scanner has made its pass and displayed the resulting digital image - an image which has been unseen by me for decades. In some ways it is the closest thing to seeing an image slowing develop onto a sheet of bromide paper whilst sloshing around in a developer bath back in the days of the darkroom. Sometimes there will be photographs of friends and relations, sometimes places. All bring back memories, and often the process is multi-layered because there are hidden images, pictures within pictures, and even pictures within pictures within pictures. The photograph above was taken on the sands at Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire back in the early 1980s And there is a picture within.

And the picture within is a tribute to the hardiness of the British holidaymaker, the seaside visitor determined to head for the seashore even if thick coats are the order of the day.

And even when the wind blows in from the east, straight from the Ural Mountains via the Baltic, and the sun is dimmed by clouds like a 40 watt bulb inside a grease-proof bag, even then the hardy holidaymakers still buy their ice cream cornets.