East Anglia has a staggering richness in the form of its medieval churches. Living in Suffolk I am naturally drawn to those of my adopted county. Though I am not sure exactly how many churches there are – I am talking historic village parish churches mainly but also some from the towns – I have just realised that I have now visited and photographed over 260 of them.

Some of these buildings are from the 1200s. Many of them are on sites that are much older, Saxon, often prehistoric. These buildings have been at the centre of their community for all that time. I find that fascinating even though the fine points of church architecture and religion are well beyond me.

I enjoy getting out and finding the churches never knowing exactly what to expect. What better way can there be of exploring the geography of Suffolk settlement? Before the pandemic and away from the towns most of the churches were open. You have the building to yourself to explore, there is always something of interest.

We are incredibly fortunate in Suffolk to have the wonderful website of Simon Knott who combines knowledge with a warm personal touch. I strongly recommend his site. He has gone on to cover Norfolk, Essex, and other places but this all started off in Suffolk. Simon Knott’s Suffolk Churches.

My galleries of Suffolk churches are easily found from my homepage at Geography Photos.

Here are a few of my favourites.

First, Aldham Church which you may recognise from then BBC ‘Detectorists’ series.

Medieval paintings of saints on rood screen inside church of Saint Andrew, Bramfield, Suffolk, England, UK – Saint Mary of Magdala

This is Little Wenham church – found at the end of a long unmade road.

Finally, another remote church at Badley a mile or so from the main road between Needham Market and Stowmarket with its unchanged largely 18th century interior.

This small gallery of exclusive images is from 29 May 2021. No surprise to see the continuing rapid rate of coastal erosion along this coastline, but something of a shock to see a large outdoor film set under construction for an Amazon Prime movie series. There is also a new (to me) development in terms of a project called Bawdsey PhotoPosts to encourage passerbys to record the changing coastline landscapes.

Gallery

The film set is to the left of this shot – you can pick out a pale stripe which is their temporary access road shown in the next picture.

Sister Pictures Limited production company will be filming a series called The Power based on a novel by Naomi Alderman. Information here

The Bawdsey PhotoPosts project is a collaborative project involving AONB Suffolk Coasts & Heaths, Deben Estuary Partnership, Bawdsey Parish Council, and coastal scientist Helene Burningham of University College London (UCL)

This reminds me of an art project in 2005 when a video camera was placed in a window of the marvellous tower and took time lapse images of the coast every 15 minutes. A set of flags was set up on the clifftop spelling out the message:

SUBMISSION IS ADVANCING AT A FRIGHTFUL SPEED

The final flag fell on 16th September 2005, by 6th January 2006 the coast had been eroded by 17 metres in one year and to mark this point one white flag was put in place on the cliff top.

The completed 30 minutes time-lapse film by Bettina Furnée & Tim Sidell, 2008 is on this site along with more details about the ‘Lines of Defence’ project.

There are also a couple of photos from Geography Photos on that website.

I came across this archive of motor racing and personal photos at an auction in Suffolk. Bill de Selincourt (1921-1994) was an active sports car racing driver in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He also returned for some more racing in the 1970s. The pictures that I have are from his earlier period. They show Bill racing and also relaxing.

Many of them must have been taken by Bill himself, others of Bill racing by his wife Mary. There are pictures of Grand Prix of the early 1960s in Belgium, Monaco, and Monza. Also pictures of Bill in action at Goodwood, Aintree, Brands Hatch and Oulton Park.

I must own up to an almost complete lack of knowledge of motors sports so it has taken me quite a time to do the research necessary to complete all captions. I am extremely grateful to those on the Alamy forum and Autosports forum who have helped fill in the gaps and spot errors. There may still be some mistakes so please do let me know.

I am delighted to be able to publish these historic pictures on my website and to make them available to publishers, archivists and enthusiasts.

The gallery of around 90 images is on my homepage at Geography Photos

Images for personal use ( and for publication) are available inexpensively at Alamy:

PA Media bought Alamy in Spring 2020. It was a fairly quiet affair and has stayed that way since. There have been no dramatic changes in the business as far as contributing photographers have been aware.

I came across this image use of mine in the Guardian a few days ago but only today did I have a second glance and then noticed something interesting. It’s the byline identifying that the article has come from PA Media – in other words it seems to be a package written and produced for the newspaper by PA using an Alamy image and presumably words from a staff member. The fee for this use has not as yet been displayed to me but a package like this is a good way to add value to images and make Alamy photographs far more appealing to publishers. So a positive sign of things to come I hope.

I’ve made a start on processing a large collection of Kodachrome slides in 37 boxes taken by geography teacher Margaret Folland (1935 – 2019). The first ones are from Trinidad and Tobago 1961-3 where Margaret taught at Bishop Anstey High School for Girls. From there she travelled widely in Central and South America as well as to Caribbean destinations. Subsequently she travelled extensively in Europe, North Africa, and south east Asia. This is the first gallery of her photos to be published on Geography Photos. The first time that they will have been published at all. It is a privilege for me to be bringing them to life.

She went to Norwich High School for Girls and then went to University of Birmingham in 1952 graduating three years later in geography. Before going to Trinidad she taught at West Bromwich Grammar School. After returning from the Caribbean she taught at Swanshurst Girls grammar school in Birmingham until 1994. Then went to Central High School, Malawi in 1994 becoming headteacher in 1997 until retirement in 2001. A member of the Geographical Association she contributed to the inaugural editorial advisory panel for ‘Teaching Geography’.

The first gallery of her images is now live on Geography Photos.

Port of Felixstowe in Chaos

It’s always heartening to come across one of my images in use, and on the BBC global website too! I have around 20,000 images with Getty Images who they are the market leaders in stock photography. All of mine are in their Editorial Section. They have been selected by a wonderful editor called Lindsey at Universal Images Group – I supply them and then they deal with Getty and many other agencies around the world. All of these images are on Geography Photos available for personal and education use at very low prices.

I also have around 71,000 images with Alamy – a UK based agency that does not edit submissions just judges them on technical quality. So if you have a DSLR that is going to be fine. Most of these images – around 63,000 – are available on Geography Photos. The missing ones are either old film slides that I have not converted to JPEGs from TIFFs, or from an old digital camera used in 2005 that with hindsight didn’t produce enough files of sufficient quality. There is a lesson there about buying the best equipment you can.

I’ve decided to leave stock sales to these agencies and their global networks and have removed all commercial pricing from Geography Photos. So, effectively Geography Photos has come full circle and is now firmly focused on education users. And, yes, I am considering a subscription service with bundles of tens of thousands of images for a low annual fee.

Let’s see if there is any interest first because I’m told that many teachers just pinch images regardless of copyright so are unlikely to pay anything 😦

Education Use – just 25p per image

http://www.geographyphotos.com

Around 63,000 images are now available for Personal and Education Use. Prices start at just 50p ( 500 pixels)

As an introductory offer this price is reduced by 50% with a minimum spend of £2.50.

In other words teachers can start to build up a library of images with 10 low res images of their choice for just £2.50

Or if you decide to collect larger images you can apply the 50% discount on the normal price of £1 ( 1500 pixels) or £2.50 (2500 pixels)

Alternatively you can mix and match images of different sizes as you like.

14 November 2020

Pam in 1960

On the beach at Teignmouth with Girls’ Crystal comic in June 1960

At Teignmouth paddling with Mum

At 9 Springfield, Vauxhall car registration PJN 631

Frinton on Sea, 1961 – is this Pam?

Other things mentioned – Jill’s wedding July 1961, Mum and Dad pre Lyn 1960, Silver wedding 1960, Ladies night 1960, Clifetonville ( sp?), Clockhouse Gardens, Burnham.

Bought at auction in Suffolk in 2019.

Can we find Pam?

Recently I was interested in bidding for an Ebay lot of over 10,000 slides that the seller, who was a house clearer, claimed to hold copyright for. His view was that when he clears a house all the property becomes his and the family want nothing more to do with any of it. So, logically it seemed that the copyright would have automatically transferred to him from the family.

The seller was willing to write a copyright transfer letter to me, and I was tempted to trust his word and anyway if I had a letter what could be so wrong? In reality, this was me trying to persuade myself and I wasn’t at all convinced.

So I wrote to the UK Intellectual Property Office telling them about the auction and they were super efficient and sent a reply in good time – so I was at least informed and didn’t make an expensive mistake ( the lot went for around £250 and I would have bid to win!).

It is a fairly definitive reply from the Copyright Enquiries section – and yes, don’t worry I asked permission from them as copyright owners before posting here! I hope that this helps inform others. One solution to this problem would be for house clearers to insert a clause in their contract covering copyright transfer, making sure that the family and solicitor understand what it is all about. That way a lot more images of our culture and social history would become available for publication rather than become lost as ‘Orphan Works’.

I sent them this email.

Hello at IPO,
I buy photographic slides on Ebay and always check that the seller owns copyright as, for example, being beneficiary in a will. I require a written copyright transfer note before I buy any slides so that I am not getting Orphan Works. 
I want to ask about the position of a house clearer who is selling slides. He tells me that ownership and responsibility for all property comes to him when he takes on a contract to clear a house. ie) any valuable left behind is his. He claims that he can therefore write a copyright transfer because the family is not interested and has passed all responsibility and ownership to him.
Could you please let me know your reaction to this claim?
Thanks

Here is their reply:

Dear Ian,

Thank you for your query that was passed to the Copyright Enquiries service to provide a response.

Please be aware that the Copyright Enquiries service is only able to provide general advice regarding current UK copyright law and cannot provide legal advice regarding how the law should be interpreted in specific cases.

It is important to be aware that copyright exists separately from the physical item itself. This means that owning, for example, a manuscript does not necessarily mean ownership of any copyright which subsists in it, and it is possible for this copyright to be owned by a different person. This means that just because the person has the physical copies of the slides does not necessarily mean that he is the copyright holder of the slides.

Ordinarily, copyright will belong to the creator of the work unless there is evidence to the contrary, or the work is created by an employee in the normal course of his employment – in which case it would belong to the employer. 

To be the copyright holder of the slides the seller must have had these rights assigned to him. Under section 90 of the of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, a transfer of copyright is only effective if it is in writing signed by the assignor. With this in mind, it is probably worth asking the seller to provide the written proof that he is indeed the copyright holder of the slides; it is possible that this is contained within the contract he has agreed with the family. 

If the seller owns the copyright in the slides then he would be free to assign these rights to you. You may find the following guidance on the transfer of copyright useful: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/379040/c-notice-201402.pdf

Ultimately who owns the copyright in the slides will depend on the agreement between the house clearer and the family. Copyright assignments are a type of contract so if you require any further assistance you may wish to seek legal advice. You should be able to find a lawyer with relevant expertise in your area using this link:

http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/choosingandusing/findasolicitor.law

Finally, please note that copyright infringement is a matter of strict liability. This means that infringement does not require intent or knowledge of wrongdoing. If you use a work for a copyright-restricted purpose on the basis of a transfer of copyright ownership or a licence that turns out to be invalid (e.g. because the person who purports to transfer copyright ownership to you is not the owner), you can be liable for infringement. You should therefore satisfy yourself that any licence of transfer of ownership is valid before using a work for any copyright-restricted act.

We hope this response has been of some assistance.

Best regards,

Copyright Enquiries

Copyright permission
The response we sent you is covered by Crown copyright. You may use this under the Open Government Licence (OGL) providing you meet the conditions of the licence.

The full terms and conditions of the OGL can be viewed here:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/