John Edward Cooper’s Notes

…Scanned the black-and-white negatives that I found yesterday (07:19–08:50). Photo №17, taken through bushes of the far end of the Limebrest Farm caravan-site, appears for the first time, for it was not printed when the photos were originally processed. One strip of negatives was missing, so by a process of elimination I found three prints that must have come from it, and scanned them (09:29–09:30). One thing became clear from the order of the negatives: I had two outings to take the photographs, for №23 was taken at Four Lane Ends, №24 along Fleetwood Road, and №27–№29 at my house, but №30 and №31 are back at Four Lane Ends. One of the scanned negatives (№8) had too much cropped from the top, so I scanned it again so that the cropping occurred at the bottom (10:06).… Back on the computer… (23:32). The shadows of … photo №17 looked horribly mottled and “noisy” now that it was dark outside and there was no ambient light around the screen, so I darkened them (00:17). An attempt to do the same for №23 failed. The black-and-white negatives are in strips of four, but for the missing one I only found three prints. I realised what the fourth was: a self-portrait of Janet and me taken through a mirror. That accounts for why the strip is missing: it has been used for reprints of the self-portrait. So I scanned the faded and dust-contaminated framed print (№25), processed it (00:21) and because it was a mirror-image made a flipped-horizontal, right-way-round version (00:22)…