My first photographs [5] - a photo on Flickriver

            In 1960, or more probably 1961, I was given my first camera as a birthday present. This was a Welsh-built Purma made out of bakelite. It had three shutter speeds defined as slow, medium and fast and shutter sped was controlled by how you held the camera, upright one way for slow, horizontal for medium and upright the other way for fast. The shutter was a weighted focal plane and one had to be careful in fast mode not to allow the camera to jolt when the the shutter fired with a massive clunk. The film used was 127 size in square format. I'm not 100% sure that the photos in this set are of my first film, but certainly from the first few films I ever took. As mentioned, date uncertain but more probably 1961 when I would have been 12 years of age.

Introducing Peter and Andrew; Peter Jenkins on the left was a friend of mine who lived in an adjacent street, we went through junior school together and subsequently through secondary education. In junior days were were very friendly but as the years went by we realised we had less in common and our friendship waned somewhat. The day we left school was the last day I ever saw Peter but he has since been in contact via Friends Reunited and has given me some photographs from my past which he had taken. It was probably the fact that Peter had a camera that prompted me to ask my parents for one as well!

Andrew Snow was not a neighbour, in fact he lived in Southampton (I think) but was a regular visitor to his aunt and uncle who lived opposite me, every school holiday time Andrew would come and stay there and we got on very well. He would be thirteen in this photo with Peter and myself a year younger. Shortly after this picture was taken Andrew and his family, including his aunt and uncle, emigrated to Australia and I haven't seen him since, although soon after my brother emigrated to Australia in the late 1970s he bumped into Andrew at an event of some sort or other. Andrew has a camera around his neck, I have no idea what's in that case though.

The location is Priory Road in Bridgend where I lived from the age of six until I was thirteen. The houses in the distance are on Ewenny Road.

Taken on: January 1, 1961

Tags:

boys

short trousers

camera

friends

wall

Priory Road

Bridgend

Wales « less

Sets appears in: • 1961 My first photographs

Stats: 4,956 views

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder