I took this photograph in Belgium a few years ago when I was doing a thing on "photographic oxymorons". Not even the intervention of a spiritual deity could bring about a transformation to the chilly waters of the English Channel.
Stones that have soaked up their fill of hard work, paths that are squeezed like luxuries between fields, valleys that hide a world of roads, railways, rivers and canals, and a mill chimney tower that proudly proclaims - This Is Halifax.
Walking In The Rain, Cleethorpes 1985: You can't really do rain in colour - it's a grey thing. Monochrome umbrellas and monochrome plastic rain hoods. Black and white reflections from wet paving stones.
I've no idea who this lady is. All I know is that 130 years or so ago she went into the Liverpool studio of Messrs Brown, Barnes and Bell in Lord Street, Liverpool to have her likeness captured. I'm the current keeper of that likeness - having bought it for 50 pence on E-Bay - and I am sharing it with the world.
This is a scan of a rather poor quality print of mine from way back when. Way back when the World Wide Web was constructed from telegraph poles and telephone wires.
The negative that this is taken from was not just old and scratched but had also been attacked by some kind of image-eating fungus. So I daubed on every Photoshop filter I could find. The extraordinary thing is that my parents shine through the years - and the filters - and I am taken straight back to when I took the photograph over sixty years ago.
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