Hong Kong In The 80s

My new project, Hong Kong In The 80s has started. It should appeal to people who like old photos, Hong Kong, the 80s, and those moments that are half-way between dream and memory. Feel free to pop over, have a squizz, and enjoy (hopefully).

Old stuff: 6

Minolta XG-M, Ilford HP5.

Old stuff: 7

Sometime 2003-2003.

Old stuff: 5

The gorge in flood, 2004.

Minolta XG-M, Ilford HP5.

Old stuff: 4

Same fountain, same set-up.

Old stuff: 3

From a fountain in central Launceston.

2002-2003, Minolta XG-M, Ilford HP5...

Hong Kong slides

In 1984 or thereabouts, my father went on a trip to south-east Asia. One of the stops was Hong Kong, where he picked up several boxes of slides aimed at the tourist market.

I was always pretty fascinated by these slides when I was a kid. The slides came with a tiny little mains-operated projector, and I spent hours looking at pictures of Hong Kong, Kowloon & all that sort of stuff. Endlessly amusing.

Anyways, I started to scan a few last year, here's one for the world to enjoy.

Old stuff: 2

Another cat - this time my own cat, Ava.

Again, 2003-2003, possibly Kodak Tri-X, although this is most likely the Minolta's handiwork...

Old stuff: 1

Photo from my university days - sometime 2002-2003.

Scan from negative, possibly Kodak Tri-x, possibly a 1960s Pentax SLR...

Old slides

On the day of my wedding (February 2009), my dad gave me a shopping bag full of slides. Originally I had asked him to bring down some boxes of slides he bought in Hong Kong in 1984, which I used to enjoy looking at as a wee tyke - I thought it'd be fun to have a look, but mostly I wanted the tiny plastic projector he bought with them. However, somewhere along the line he also dug up another, much larger, and far more important box of slides.

You see, the slides were taken by my great grandfather, and feature images of my dad & his family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unfortunately I lack a projector to view them large (dad forgot to bring this down), and my flatbed scanner just doesn't cut it. The above images were attempts to scan with a flatbed - not totally flash, but a start.

These are probably some of the few images in existence of my dad as a child. Photography wasn't a huge part of nan & pop's lives when their kids were growing up.

It's nice to have a photographic link to the past. Dad says his nan & pop (ie. my great grandparents) used to go for a Sunday drive with their grandkids quite regularly. In fact the first slide I looked at I instantly recognised as a view of the Great Western Tiers from the Bracknell area. I hope to find a few more gems when I get them scanned (whether I buy a cheap neg scanner & do this myself, or have them done by the local photo chain, I haven't decided).