The Union Canal.

During the summer, I received a very suspicious email through the camera club with the sort of names, grammar and spelling mistakes that rang my internal spam alert. I replied a little cautiously and it turned out to be from a curator of the Scottish Portrait Gallery claiming he had a photograph of mine. It was this one.
I married Mrs TD in 1973 (on my birthday) and we moved up to Edinburgh and joined the Edinburgh Photographic Society. My pictures were not well received although Mrs TD seemed to gather a reasonable following. This particular photo, taken during my lunch break was entered in the Members Exhibition, which was the only event that had an external judge, and it walked off with the President’s Trophy awarded to the best beginner’s photograph. It was considered to be a very weak entry to take the trophy so we didn’t stay friends for long. It seems that some time later the Society off-loaded a lot of old prints to the Gallery who now want to formalise the copyright status of items in their possession. It seems possible, though unlikely, that my picture will go on display and be turned into postcards.
 
I don’t know the exact date I took this, but I do know within a couple of weeks so I’m posting it against the approximate date. The negative strip confirms my memories of taking a few trial shots and then waiting, as I had seen this gent with his two dugs approaching. The camera was a Praktica FX-2 loaded with FP4 film and it looks like a 35 mm lens. I had studied the “Ilford Manual of Photography” and had learnt to formulate my own developers and had a penchant of using an aggressive formula to exaggerate the film grain; I also rolled my own film cassettes, often with only a dozen frames on them, so I didn’t waste too much film by changing it if I wanted a different film characteristic. These days you can just change the ISO with a switch on the camera, and add grain in Photoshop.