Colour photography.

The black and white photograph of Mistress Talpa was taken a few, well actually quite a lot of, years ago. It reminded me of just how rapidly things change.

When the photograph was taken not many people had a camera, and certainly not one capable of producing a decent portrait. So, people went to the local photographic studio to have their children photographed. 

At that time colour photographs were quite rare, despite the fact that the first colour photograph had been taken way back in 1855, by the great James Clerk Maxwell, Professor of physics at Aberdeen University. The alternative, in Mrs Talpa's youth, was to have your B&W portrait skillfully hand coloured by the studio, as in the middle photograph.

To bring us up to date, the  photograph on the right has been "automatically" colourised using Photoshop Elements.

Don't believe those who  say that the camera never lies; Mrs T. has brown eyes, not blue, she doesn't have ginger hair and on the day she was wearing a yellow dress, not a blue one!