Posts Tagged ‘1983’

Christmas Greetings From My Flickr Albums

Monday, December 25th, 2023

Christmas Greetings From My Flickr Albums – There are only 17 pictures out of the roughly 30,000 on my Flickr account which have the tag ‘Christmas‘, and some of those are only because I’ve mentioned the festival in my description rather than for anything in the picture. Although I’ve taken many pictures of Santas on the streets of London, almost all of these have been in the last 25 years, and so far I’ve mainly put pictures from earlier times onto Flickr – mostly from 1970-1994 and mainly of London. Wishing you all a happy Christmas. But if you get too fed up with the nonsense on TV or even with family and friends there are plenty of pictures on-line to look at!


Former Cobblers, Hackney Road, Cambridge Heath, Tower Hamlets. 1983 36u-62
Former Cobblers, Hackney Road, Cambridge Heath, Tower Hamlets, 1983 36u-62

I took this in 1983, looking through the window of a cobblers shop which had recently closed but still had posters with the message ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without Pirelli’. Santa Claus wasn’t entirely the invention of Coca-Cola though his popularity and appearance owes much to their Christmas advertising from the 1930s. The article on the link to Wikipedia above has more about Santa than you will ever want to know. This year I produced a short run of poorly printed versions of this picture as Christmas cards for selected personal friends, mainly photographers. This picture is in my album London 1983 and also appears in Tower Hamlets – Black and White.

Auto-Sparks Ltd, Electric Harness Manufacturers, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1982 33g21
Auto-Sparks Ltd, Electric Harness Manufacturers, Wincolmlee, Hull, 1982 33g21

In my Hull Black and White album you can find this picture and the long description below:

An unprepossessing 20th century industrial building on or close to Wincolmlee where electrical harnesses – bundles of cables and connectors – for various makes of cars and other vehicles were made. Apparently Auto-Sparks Ltd Hull dates back to an electrical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb on Beverley Rd in the 1920s. Auto-Sparks Ltd was incorporated in April 1942 and a history page on the web site of its successor company, Autosparks reproduces the original company logo from 1954 when it was registered as a trade mark.

After the original owner and manager retired in the 1980s Auto-Sparks got into difficulties and collapsed in 1991. It was bought and moved to Sandiacre Nottingham by R D Components who were specialists in classic motorbike and car harnesses and they took over the name as Autosparks, and in 2005 became Autosparks Ltd.

This picture was taken in December, and my attention was drawn to the building by the Christmas decorations drawn on its first-floor windows. And by wondering whatever an electric harness was.

Hull Black and White

The SI unit of electric charge is of course the Coulomb, named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, so this electical business founded by Mr Henry Colomb would appear to be a remarkable example of nominative determinism.

Father Christmas, High Rd, Willesden, Brent, 1990, 90-12c-55
Father Christmas, High Rd, Willesden, Brent, 1990, 90-12c-55

In 1990 in Brent I took two Christmas pictures in 1990, one in black and white in the album 1990 London Photos of a Santa holding a number of figures and with a Harrods tag ‘£22’ standing on a box containing a caravan TV aerial kit.

Café, Christmas, Harlesden, Brent, 1990, 90c12-01b-41
Café, Christmas, Harlesden, Brent, 1990, 90c12-01b-41

The second picture from 1990 Brent was a café window in colour with Christmas decorations and an advert posted in it for flats to let in Station Road. Also in the window is a poster for Sickle Cell Awareness Day, 15th December 1990, to the left of which you can see part of me reflected as I made the image, along with reflections of a parked van and the shops and flats on the opposite side of the road. This is one of many pictures in my album 1990 London Colour.

Christmas, Car Sales, High St, Norwood, Croydon, 1991, 91-1b-22
Christmas, Car Sales, High St, Norwood, Croydon, 1991, 91-1b-22

From a South London used car showroom in the album 1991 London Photos is a 1987 car with its features and price described in notices on the windscreen complete with Christmas decorations. Usually when photographing interiors through windows I tried to work close to the glass and eliminate reflections so far as possible, but here I deliberately moved the black glove I was wearing to include the church across the road.

Christmas Lights, West End, Westminster, London, 1986, 86c123-32
Christmas Lights, West End, Westminster, London, 1986, 86c123-32

In 1986 I took a few colour photographs at night around Piccadilly Circus just before Christmas which are in both 1986 Colour – London & the Thames and in Westminster – Colour 1985-92.

Pictures at night are so much easier now with digital cameras as you can work with much shorter exposures – this was probably taken on ISO400 film, while now at night I often work and get better results at 4 stops faster – the ISO6400 setting on my camera. Also being able to see what you have taken immediately makes it much easier than having to wait until the film was processed and printed.

Eros, Christmas, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster, 1986, 86c123-43
Eros, Christmas, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster, 1986, 86c123-43

In the same albums and taken within a minute or two of the previous picture was this picture of Eros and the advertising display. The clock tells us that I made this at 16.06, around 15 minutes after sunset. Of course Eros isn’t really Eros, but Anteros, designed by Sir Alfred Gilbert to commemorate the philanthropic work of Lord Shaftesbury and called by him ‘The God of Selfless Love‘ – “as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.”

But Piccadilly is a place at Christmas where some like to come and celebrate drunkenly and Anteros needs boarding up for protection and instead of seeing the fountain we see the hoardings with vintage Christmas images and greetings from The London Standard which featured Eros on its masthead.

Christmas, Shop window, Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988, 88c1-01-61
Christmas, Shop window, Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith & Fulham, 1988, 88c1-01-61

Finally in 1988 in Shepherds Bush and now the first image in my album 1988 London Colour. This shop was a pet shop and the window is full of Christmas Stockings for cats and dogs and boxes of ‘Good Boy’ treats. Even the scratching post has some green ribbon attached. Along with some rather horrible artificial tree-like objects complete with blue and silver hanging balls. It seemed a particularly bleak image of the capitalist commercialisation of a religious festival.


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Notting Hill 1993

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020

I’ve started, so I might as well finish. Here are a few of my pictures from Notting Hill Carnival in 1993, still in black and white. I did take a few in colour, probably using up a film already in the camera, but I’ve not really looked at them yet. Perhaps in a few days I’ll find time.

In the 1990s I was still working as a full-time teacher in a Sixth Form and Community College, and too often we seemed to start the term the Tuesday after carnival and I would go into work with ears still ringing part-deafened from the previous day. Carnival wasn’t just loud on the ears, the tarmac of the street vibrated with the beat, and so too did your internal organs, your whole body dancing to the music. It took me a few days to recover. Fortunately the first few days of term were mostly taken up with administration and not actual teaching.

It’s now around 20 years since I left full-time teaching to earn a living through writing and photography so even had I been able to go to carnival I wouldn’t be worried about going in to work today.

I seem to have taken rather fewer pictures than usual in 1993, or at least to have scanned rather fewer. I was in Notting Hill on both the Sunday and Monday and made almost 500 exposures, but there are only 17 in the album from that year. Looking at the contact sheets I think there are probably a few more worth adding when I have time.

Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bl-61_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bm-33_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bp-62_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bf-43_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bg-12_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bj-21-8_2400
Notting Hill Carnival, 1993. Peter Marshall 93-8bl-53_2400

More in the album Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.


Brighton 1983

Monday, March 16th, 2020

Here’s one I made earlier. I’d forgotten completely about this image, taken on a family trip to Brighton, but came across it in my archive on hard disk when I was looking for something else a few days ago, and thought it looked interesting.

But I was busy with other things and didn’t make a note of the file name, and when I decided I would share the picture I couldn’t find it. I spent an hour late last night looking through folder after folder of images. It didn’t fit any of the categories I have, and I went to bed annoyed with myself for not being able to find it.

I spent another half hour this morning. If only when I scanned images back in 2012 I had added some metadata. I’d thought a little more about when I’d taken the image, and thought it was almost certainly when we had two young German girls staying with us, some time in the early 1980s. I couldn’t exactly remember the year, but it was easy to track down some of the pictures I’d taken of them playing with my own children.

It still wasn’t easy to recognise this image from the small thumbnail in File Explorer’s ‘Large Icons’ mode, which was on its side and rather low in contrast, and I wasn’t sure I had found it until I double-clicked to load it into FastPictureViewer Pro and see it full-screen.

I wasn’t surprised to find that I hadn’t retouched the scan and there were as usual quite a few blemishes, particularly noticeable in the sky area. Usually I retouch images on a second computer which has a small Wacom Graphire pad and stylus, and is still on Windows 7 – I can’t get this old pad to work on Windows 10. I couldn’t be bothered to switch to that machine for a single image, so I did the retouching using a mouse. It made me realise why I normally use the Wacom pad.

Then I saved the image, resized it to post online (the original is roughly one hundred times the number of pixels), converted to 8 bit sRGB and made the mistake of saving it again over the original file. Fortunately on a drive connected to the other machine I had a backup. So I had to start that machine to restore the original file, and before I did so used the stylus and pad to do a slightly better and rather easier retouch.

Back in 1983 we were of course working with film, and when I took this picture I couldn’t be sure I had caught the moment. It surprises me now that this was the only frame I took, but of course I was on Brighton Palace Pier with a group of people most of whom were more interested in ice creams and silly hats than taking pictures, and some were probably pulling at my arms as I stopped to make this exposure with my Olympus OM1 on Ilford FP4.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.