All of a piece
The uniforms may have changed and the perambulators (“prams”) are now high tech, but the rich still delegate child care to paid help in upscale London.
Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX, ‘scanned’ on a Nikon D800.
Insane violence.
Doubtless Punch & Judy are long retired in out woke society, but the shows were incredible fun. They usually ended up with the two puppets beating the hell out of one another, much to the delight of the children watching. A single puppeteer did all the work.
These snaps are from August 1973 in Kensington Gardens, London. Note how well dressed the children are in what was an upper demographic area:
Leica M3, 280mm Telyt, Visoflex II, Ilford FP4 developed in 1:50 Rodinal, rated at 250ASA. Negatives scanned on a Nikon D800, 60mm Micro Nikkor.
Atmospheric.
Along with Père Lachaise in Paris (Chopin, Jim Morrison, Proust), Highgate Cemetery in London is as atmospheric as these places get. Its most famous resident is Karl Marx and let’s hope he stays six feet under.
These were snapped in July, 1973 and for once I appear to have abandoned my favorite Kodak emulsion in favor of Ilford’s HP3 processed in Agfa’s high acutance developer Rodinal, diluted 1:50. Disclosure: TriX was better.
Fast flare.
1972/3 saw me as a member of Leica Postal Portfolios which was a photo interchange/critique club where you circulated a large box of 12″ x 15″ prints by mail, adding yours and critiquing those of other members. It seems that it exists to this day. There were some 12 members in my group, a friendly bunch of Leica fanatics. You learned a lot and made some great friends. We all did our own processing and printing.
One of those friends loaned me his Leica 50mm f/1.5 Summarit lens which was as fast as they got back then. Two stops faster than my pedestrian f/2.8 Elmar, it was based on a 1930s Zeiss Xenon design (Leitz paid Zeiss royalties) and, while coated, still flared pretty mightily at full aperture. And full aperture it was when I headed out on the street to the nearest telephone booth:
I actually rather like the way the flare works here, enhancing the feeling of night. I just “rescanned” this with the D800 and it’s come up better than ever.
Two ended.
The Pushmi-Pullyu is a two headed unicorn-gazelle cross, one head at either end. It features in Hugh Lofting’s ‘Doctor Dolittle’ children’s books from the 1920s. In the Rex Harrison movie of 1967 it becomes a llama, but the design is much the same.
I was reminded of this when snapping these giraffes in London Zoo in November, 1972
That hardware was a real pig to use but it worked fine with giraffes!
The long Telyt lenses had manual pre-set diaphragms, weighing a ton, and the mirror attachment (adding further tonnage) required that the mirror be re-cocked/lowered manually after each exposure. A Nikon F would have been a better idea.