My 1970s Images

I have realised that next year - 2020 - I will have been taking photographs for half a century.

I started in late 1970, after persuading my mother to buy a Kodak Instamatic Camera from an offer on the back of a Rice Krispies packet. I cannot remember how much this bargain cost us, but, aged eight or just nine, I was elated when it arrived.

I can't recall much about taking the pictures but I do remember getting them processed at Boots and, especially, the excitement of picking them up, tearing open the packaging, desperately eager to see the fruits of my labour.

The Kodak Instamatic 25 wasn't a sophisticated camera range, and I believe that mine, the Instamatic 25, was the cheapest and simplest of the lot.

It boasted fixed aperture and fixed focusing. But I understand that there were two shutter speeds, indicated by a sun symbol (1/90th second) and a half-sun symbol (1/40th second).

The Instamatic 25 took 126 "Kodapak" film cartridges which, I guess, must have all have been the same speed. Certainly, there was no ASA/ISO setting. It was not fast film, maybe 100 ASA or even slower.

There was no other camera or photographer in the family, so my pictures of us are unique, excepting a few professional or school photographs.

I embarked on photography with childish enthusiasm but no skill or knowledge.

However, from the start, I made an effort to pose my subjects, such as my younger brother Nic on his bicycle, or one of the Bullpit boys from down the lane posing on his bike in front of his front door.

At first, everything was taken in black and white. In those days, black and white photography was still cheaper to do than colour photography, which was considered quite extravagant.

Cataloguing my images recently, I realised that I have very few prints left.

I wonder what happened to them. I don't currently have a negative scanner. I also took quite a lot of colour slides, which are pretty good, but, again, I cannot scan at the moment. I loved them particularly because the cost of processing was included in the price of the film.

Looking back, the 1970s was an innocent time. When I started taking pictures, we lived at 15 Hurst Lane, Cumnor, Oxfordshire.

The lane was more like a track in those days, without tarmac. My brothers and I spent a lot of time playing in the field and shrubbery - 'The Passages' - the other side of the lane from the bungalow.

They were strange times. I recall coming home from school one day to find the lane sealed off by police officers. A farmer had been shot dead by a burglar, an event so rare that it was reported on the national BBC Nine O'Clock News.

My brothers and I attended Cumnor Village School where they had gathered us into the hall to watch on television Charles invested as Prince of Wales, at Caernarfon Castle, Wales, now half a century ago.

On the school photograph above, I believe I am the boy bottom second from the left.

At home, the house was small - we three brothers shared the same bedroom, but the garden was large.

Our Dad, Robin Wilson who sadly died in 2015, was a vegetable gardener. I recall being fascinated by watching him digging - and the sheer size of the carrots coming out of the ground. To this day on my allotment, I have never managed to grow carrots of that size.

Considering my age, lack of photographic experience and very basic camera, some of these photos are not bad.

Although, of course, some of them were pretty bad!

When I took this picture of the Bullpit brothers, I clearly didn't notice that a branch was in front of one of the boys' face.

Incidentally, the elder Bullpit, Christopher, is carrying a camera. It looks like a Kodak Brownie.

I wonder what became of the Bullpits. They would be in their late fifties now.

I also often think of my Cumnor Village School pal Basil Harris, although I cannot find any print or negative with his image on. Perhaps, we were only friends before I owned the camera.

Basil was the son of an academic who had a large house at the bottom of Cumnor Hill. I suspect he does not even remember "Chris Wilson", as I was known then, but if he does, it would be lovely to hear from him.


At home in those days, something as simple as putting up a little tent in the garden seemed like an adventure.

A young family, without a lot of money, we made the most of our surroundings, enjoyed the open countryside and the things that life brought us for little or nothing.

I am unsure about how happy these days were, though. I certainly enjoyed the freedom of living in the Oxfordshire countryside, but, being quite dyslexic, I was a misundertsood and troubled child who spent a lot of time at school in tears.

My memories of the decade are very patchy, and often the recollections that come to mind are not the happiest ones.

I never seemed to get my act together. I remember telling my mother late one night that there was a school trip the following day for which I would need sandwiches, precipitating a dreadful panic because there was no bread in the house and it needed to be borrowed from the neighbours.
On another occasion, I was very upset because of my desire to enter a wild flowers competition and our subsequent collective failure to find any wild flowers!

Worse still, I remember being told off by my mum for misbehaving at my birthday party, trying to shoot all the guests with a toy gun.

In 1971, we moved from Oxfordshire to Dorset. Dad had got a new job with Southern Gas and we relocated to 6 Charborough Road, Broadstone, Poole.

The house was much larger than the Cumnor one and the garden also a good size. Houses were far more affordable in those days.

My interest in photography continued. I went on taking picutres with the Kodak 25, not graduating to a Halina camera, bought with Green Shield Stamps, until the age of 14.

My brothers were still my primary subjects, although occasionally Mum would use the camera to take a group shot of the four of us (as in the one below taken in the 6 Charborough Road garden).

In colour, I started taking shore and sea scenes at Sandbanks and Brownsea Island, which I may scan when I have the equipment, and show at a later date.

Generally, I became more interested in photography of inanimate objects - to the puzzlement of family and friends.

I don't know why this is. Even now, I find myself drawn to taking landscapes, seascapes and pictures of buildings. Anything without people in!

We lived at one end of Charborough Road and at the end was the Recreation Ground a.k.a. "The Rec", which bordered Canford Heath.

I liked nothing more than heading off on my little bicycle to take some black-and-white, somewhat out-of-focus pictures of heathland!

For some reason, the pines, the heather, the rhodedendra appeared exotic to me.

Once I saw an adder, but I failed to capture it on film, possibly because I was running away.

In truth, I think I spent much of my time alone. I did not have a lot of friends as a child growing up in Broadstone.


When I eventually reached Poole Grammar School, I started printing up my black-and-white pictures in the school darkroom.

I would take a photo a seaside bench, perceiving great beauty in its deteriorating paintwork.

I have gone through all my 1970s pictures, categorising them and pressing labels onto the Boots wallets and Kodak slide boxes that the negatives or transparencies are kept in.

I'm not sure if I have memories of what is pictured from having looked at the photographs in years and decades past or from my original recollections of those times, if you get my drift.

A statistical analysis indicates that from 1970 to 1979, I took 34 films (they were all purchased from meagre pocket money) with a total of 525 images.

To my surprise, just 11 of the films were black and white. The colour ones will have to wait for another day!