Family life

Snapshot … Chris Winterflood, front right, with his grandad and brothers Peter, left, and John in 1955.

Snapshot: Shrimping in Norfolk with Grandad

My father, who died in 2005 aged 82, was a serious amateur photographer. He did his own developing and printing and enlarged his best photos using equipment he had made himself with a coffee can and instructions from Amateur Photographer.
Since his death, I have rediscovered many of the photographs he took (the best in black and white) and it is like having him back, although of course he is not in the pictures. Although, in a way he is, as I can feel him just outside the frame as he releases the shutter of his Voigtländer twin lens reflex camera and captures the moment.
This was taken on Happisburgh beach on the east Norfolk coast in the summer of 1955. Happisburgh has been in the news in recent years because the cliffs are being badly eroded and properties are falling into the sea, but at this time even the massive wooden sea defences of the late 1950s were not yet in place.
My brothers and I had been shrimping and this picture shows us inspecting the catch with my grandad, Will (my mum's father). Peter is on the left, John is holding the net.

#oldphotos