Happy Halloween from Henry

30 Oct 2015: Since Halloween tomorrow is my good friend and colleague Roger Taylor’s birthday, it seemed like an auspicious time to celebrate by turning to one of Talbot’s spookiest images. It is a marvel, but I have never understood the precise origins of its spectacular colour. A Forbidding Stand of Winter Trees Seemingly sprouting up from the …

A wee while in Scotland

23 Oct 2015: There is a saying in Scotland that if you don’t like the weather, wait a wee while and it will change. By October 1844, Talbot’s personal weather was changing for the better. Gone were the storm clouds of 1839, displaced by an ever-increasing mastery of his own new art. Even though he was feeling poorly …

Sunny Skies & Autumnal Evenings in Scotland

16 Oct 2015: Earlier this week (in 1844), Henry Talbot departed from York where he had been participating in the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Accompanied by Nicolaas Henneman, once his valet but now the proud owner of his own Talbotype establishment in Reading, the two men must have been in high …

The veneration of an unknown saint

9 Oct 2015: In my periodic visits to Lacock Abbey, Talbot’s great-great-grandson, the late Anthony Burnett-Brown very patiently put up with a lot of odd requests. One was to find a particular piece of ancient painted glass. We searched all the insets to the windows in the Abbey, spotting similar ones but not the particular one that I …

Snap-shooting in the evening sun

2 Oct 2015: While I am normally averse to quoting dictionaries, today let us start with the OED‘s definition of a snapshot: ‘a quick or hurried shot taken without deliberate aim, esp. one at a rising bird or quickly moving animal.’ They establish its first use in conjunction with the misfortune of some pheasants in 1808. It was …