I took this photograph on Great Yarmouth Beach way back in December 2004. It was a cold, foggy afternoon which in someway was quite the perfect conditions to photograph the over-wintering of this fantastically visual town.
A chance conversation with the photographer Nick White, whose studio I visited recently, mentioned that there was a call for photographs of Great Yarmouth for an exhibition as part of the festival celebrating the work of Peter Henry Emerson. You can read more here:
www.utternonsense.co.uk/finding-emerson
I’ve hardly thought about this series of photographs for seventeen years. I knew I had a few saved in my screen saver folder and so quickly entered them thinking nothing more about it. This one, obviously titled Wobbly World, was selected and I received an email asking for a high res version. I confidently replied “no problem” whilst panicking that finding the original might just be a step too far.
I’d forgotten how carefully I used to archive my photographs. Contact sheets created and printed off for each numbered folder. The folders then burnt to DVDs for ‘safe keeping’ and the contact sheets stored in a lever-arch file.
My system worked perfectly and within an hour of receiving the request the original high res image was flying off to Great Yarmouth - phew!
I’ve recently been going through the pain of learning Lightroom. I find it incredible that it’s taken me so long (a bit like creating this website) to understand how brilliant it is. Had I been using Lightroom back in 2004 I could have found the photograph in lightening fast time with no anxiety that I might not have been able to retrieve it.
Consquently, I’ve spent the past week or so working through my archive. What a brilliant thing to do. I highly recommend it - even if you don’t have time.
It’s been wonderful to recall so many places, people and photographs I’d almost completely forgotten about. I’ve tasked myself with getting my archive off DVDs, onto hard-drives and into Lightroom. I’m almost ready to start bringing them in and going through them properly.
The temptation, as I’ve being copying over file after file, to stop and start editing has been huge. I’ve resisted. I want to be able to savour the memories and take time to acknowledge that I’ve been taking photographs for a very long time!