The Found Film site is live

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on a new site for discovered film pictures which I’ve called Found Film. I’m happy to say that, although there are still some features I want to add, the site is basically running and now has enough content to make it interesting to visit, so I’ve started to publicise the site.

For anyone interested in seeing it, the url is https://everythingvintage.uk/browse-photos.

To whet your appetite, I’ve added a selection of pictures to this post from the site which I’ve published over the last few days whilst I’ve been getting the site ready. To see any picture in its full glory try clicking on it.

What’s it all about?

The basic idea of the site is to give a home to photographs which have been taken on film and discovered either in a long forgotten vintage camera or I have bought as boxes of colour slides or photos from house clearances and car boot sales.

This came about because I realised that although it is common place these days to share pictures on social media, there must be millions of pictures taken over the years which have only been seen by the person who took it or their immediate group of family or friends. The pictures could have been locked in drawers or cupboards, hidden in old albums or in some cases sitting undeveloped in an old camera. Just think of the moments in history which may have been undiscovered and could now be seen.

I know realistically many people will be bored by the thought of this, but I find it fascinating to see these old pictures and wonder about the people and places portrayed. I also find it fascinating to try to piece together the location, event and date from the evidence shown in the pictures.

For example, I found the picture shown on the right in a box of old glass mounted slides which I bought for £5 from ebay. It shows a group of children posting outside an hotel. I did a little bit of research on google and discovered a picture of the same hotel today on google maps! (The modern google map is linked on the picture page on Found Film). I found if a real thrill to have discovered the exact location the photo was taken nearly 60 years later just from the clues in the picture!

If you want to do the same, try looking at any of the pictures on the site and see what you can deduce. I’ve added notes to the pictures and in some cases made guesses about location and dates, but if you want to make suggestions please use the comments system on Found Film and I will update the notes.

Just so everyone is aware, I’m just going to point out that the Found Film site is not linked to the subscribers of this blog in anyway. It is not hosted  on WordPress.com and therefore the subscriptions system is completely separate. If you want to sign up to Found Film, by all means use the subscription box on the site but if you don’t want to that’s fine you won’t receive any notifications from that site via this one – just wanted to make that clear.

To anyone who is interested I’m intending to probably create a newsletter on Found Film which will go out perhaps weekly or fortnightly with the most interesting content added over that period. If the site seems to be popular I will probably add the ability for others to upload pictures they have found.

In the meantime anyone who is interested please pay a visit, sign up if you want or just bookmark and visit again sometime. At the moment I’m adding about 10 pictures a day because I have a batch of colour slides and black & white negatives I’ve bought to work through, so the content is increasing reasonably quickly.