WINNER! 40th SC Challenge - Hark Back!

Petach

Hall of Famer
Location
UK, Essex
Name
Peter Tachauer
It is official, the Challenge is middle aged! Normally, that means middle aged spread, bingo wings, muffin tops, pony tails, mid life crisis cars or motor bikes, not being able to get out of a chair without saying "Allez 'Up", not being able to get down to sit on the floor without looking like you've been sniped, and worst of all? being offered a seat on the train or bus (twice in the past year for me and I am only a relatively young...and I thought robust looking, 62)

However, in our digital age, we can airbrush or photoshop to our hearts content to hide the march of time.

My teen years were more years ago than I care to think about......but seem like only yesterday. Tempus Fugit eh?

I find that the older I get, the more my senses take me back to my teen years....the loves, the insecurities, the (now) embarrassing clothing, our Mums, Dads and other family members and our relationships with them.

Music, cooking, perfume or after shave, clothing, a tune, inventions, buildings, transport whatever........

Take me back to your teen years. It's hard I know to depict an aroma, or a sound.....but you can depict what made them. Just give me anything to make you smile with fondness or gives pause for thought in comparing then and now.

Tough ask, but it is the 40th. Do your best friends. I look forward to seeing some interesting interpretation!

A little explanation ......a story to match your photo would be good too. Or, you may leave it to the shot to explain

Good luck!

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The challenge will run for two weeks (approximately) and I'll close it on 18th August around 8pm UK time. I'll give warning/reminders closer to the date.

1. Either take pictures that match the nominated theme or select some from your portfolio. You must be the photographer that created the images in order to enter it.

2. Only one entry per salon, please. If you want to withdraw an entry and replace it with another, that is OK, but you must make it clear in the post containing your replacement pictures that this is what you've done. You can add or change the title and add to the edit line to let everyone know.

3. The decision of the curator at the end of the challenge is final - don't give him/her a hard time about it: this is just a friendly photo-challenge, after all!

4. The winner will assume the responsibility of curator for the next Salon Challenge, and as soon as possible post a message in a new thread in the SC Photo Challenges forum, with details of the new theme. Don't forget - that opening message must include a copy of these instructions, which also double as the rules.

5. The curator cannot enter his or her own salon
 
What a wonderful topic, Pete :). If you don't mind, I'm going to scan some older shots from about 45 years ago. The years of believing we would never get old. I cant get down to the floor or ground anymore, let alone get up again: at 67, I have become all the things I was afraid of. Decrepitude aint much fun. But I am going to enjoy searching out those photos (Kodak Instamatics, no less) and find something suitable for here :)
 
What a wonderful topic, Pete :). If you don't mind, I'm going to scan some older shots from about 45 years ago. The years of believing we would never get old. I cant get down to the floor or ground anymore, let alone get up again: at 67, I have become all the things I was afraid of. Decrepitude aint much fun. But I am going to enjoy searching out those photos (Kodak Instamatics, no less) and find something suitable for here :)

thats great Sue.....I know it is a difficult and testing task. Wide interpretation is ok by me.
 
Best I could come up with. Not a very high res shot, but here ya go.

My niece playing with some of our original Star Wars toys



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From 1982 and for about 5 years after, me and my mates used to use our school bus passes to ride into Soho in London and spend all of our pocket money on vinyl in this place:

groove_records.png


That photograph (not mine) would have been taken around that era. How fondly do I look back on this time? By making sure I always always pass the old building on my visits back to London. The shot below was taken on my most recent visit in June.

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Soho
by Otim, on Flickr

The record shop is of course long gone and now some trendy clothing store, but it's nice to see the name "Groove Records" fossilised into the concrete floor of the shop as an un-removeable mark to what was once there.
 
From 1982 and for about 5 years after, me and my mates used to use our school bus passes to ride into Soho in London and spend all of our pocket money on vinyl in this place:

View attachment 127516

That photograph (not mine) would have been taken around that era. How fondly do I look back on this time? By making sure I always always pass the old building on my visits back to London. The shot below was taken on my most recent visit in June.

Is it my imagination, but can I also see a very very faint wording in the concrete strip above the windows?

Either way......I also recall spending time in our local record shop. There were 2 booths at the back where you could put headphones on (Bakelite) and listen to the latest sounds. In my youth, that would have been Led Zep' and others of that ilk. We also had a record player at home which I would put on the floor PUT MY EAR TO IT AND RAMP UP THE VOLUME!.........much to my parents disgust!

Thanks for rekindling such memories.
 
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Best I could come up with. Not a very high res shot, but here ya go.

My niece playing with some of our original Star Wars toysView attachment 127514

Star wars came to me in my very early 20's. However, like many I had a very soft spot for Princess Leia. My son had a lot of the Star Wars toys before his teens and they ended up in the loft by the time he was a teenager.

Might be interesting for you but apparently the noise a TIE fighter made was generated by over dubbing the soundtrack of a car driving on a wet road onto the soundtrack of the noise a baby elephant makes.
 
In August 1971, I was at 16 years and had already been bitten with the photography bug for over two years. This was one of the first rolls of color film (agfa color print) that went through my first real 35mm camera.
A Nikkormat with a 50mm f1.4 lens.
I posed my mother and father with younger brother in front of their Dodge Station wagon. My father was (he passed in 1994) an avid golfer and I had them hold his huge golf umbrellas. I think they were on the way to see a Dallas Cowboys american football game. Thus the binoculars in the case on my father's shoulder.
8-1971b.jpg
Join to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
 
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Star wars came to me in my very early 20's. However, like many I had a very soft spot for Princess Leia. My son had a lot of the Star Wars toys before his teens and they ended up in the loft by the time he was a teenager.

Might be interesting for you but apparently the noise a TIE fighter made was generated by over dubbing the soundtrack of a car driving on a wet road onto the soundtrack of the noise a baby elephant makes.

I was the prime age for the original series to be on VHS in our house all the time. I wore out Episode 4.

Return of the Jedi was the very first movie I ever went to a movie theatre for.

We had a whole assortment of toys that we played with, I love seeing the joy being continued. :)
 
In August 1971, I was at 16 years and had already been bitten with the photography bug for over two years. This was one of the first rolls of color film (agfa color print) that went through my first real 35mm camera.
A Nikkormat with a 50mm f1.4 lens.
I posed my mother and father with younger brother in front of their Dodge Station wagon. My father was (he passed in 1994) an avid golfer and I had them hold his huge golf umbrellas. I think they were on the way to see a Dallas Cowboys american football game. Thus the binoculars in the case on my father's shoulder.
View attachment 127527
Impressive in that when I look back on photos of my family from 1971, not one of them is in colour - we just hadn't got round to that yet.
 
In August 1971, I was at 16 years and had already been bitten with the photography bug for over two years. This was one of the first rolls of color film (agfa color print) that went through my first real 35mm camera.
A Nikkormat with a 50mm f1.4 lens.
I posed my mother and father with younger brother in front of their Dodge Station wagon. My father was (he passed in 1994) an avid golfer and I had them hold his huge golf umbrellas. I think they were on the way to see a Dallas Cowboys american football game. Thus the binoculars in the case on my father's shoulder.
View attachment 127527

What a lovely photo! Most of the shots I have from family around that time were B&W and about an inch square so you can't make out who was who or even if it was a who or a what! Your shot also reminds me of how we, as kids here in jolly old England, saw the all American family.........given to us by various TV series of the time. Great clarity and colour and placing. Love the car!
 
My interest in photography is almost lifelong. Here’s a picture of my father and me taken in 1959, (I was 11) and there’s my Brownie Starflash camera around my neck. Looking at the apparent angle of the shot, it might have been taken by my younger sister.
View attachment 127538

I am sure we all have a photo similar to this, a nugget of gold. A piece of paper altered by chemicals on the surface.......but an almost tangible sense of the time and of the subjects within for us; the outsiders looking in.
 
I am sure we all have a photo similar to this, a nugget of gold. A piece of paper altered by chemicals on the surface.......but an almost tangible sense of the time and of the subjects within for us; the outsiders looking in.

I found the picture in a family album that contains many others that are much older, some likely taken in Europe before immigration. The album was old, bulky and quite noticeable as an album. It’s important that photo albums are distinctive. Whether stored in an attic, basement, back of the barn, storage shed, or on a shelf, when someone finds one they know what’s inside.

How long will our digital (non printed) pictures last? Will they be readable? In 75 to 100 years will our collections (DVDs, CDs, USB keys, external drives, cloud drives, etc.) be recognizable, accessible, useable?
 
A museum picture, but very much like our livingrooms in the 1950's.
View attachment 127654
_DSC1642 by Micheal Johnson, on Flickr
amen to that, yes indeed. I recall my parents having a pice of furniture which had a TV on the right and a radiogramme/turntable on the left. There was a green light which went on as you turned it one, then it took about a minute to go when you turned it off. I would put my eye to the green glow and weave some sort of sci fi story around it in my head!

This was in the days when you had to get off your backside to turn TV over or turn the volume up/down.
 
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