The Family Galleries are of more historical than photographic interest. Although I have taken many of these photographs, a lot of the older ones have been taken by family members on very basic equipment who knew little if anything about exposure, camera shake, level horizons. There were often no such things as flashguns, little choice of and rarely any means of critical focus, and the finished results were often poorly processed and not always very well looked after.

Storage was often inside albums not designed to protect the precious contents and they often ended up forgotten or abandoned in damp cupboards and drawers. Many photos didn't even make it into an album and negatives were almost never kept.

As a result of all the above, many of the photographs destined for these galleries will have received a measure of "repair" work before being placed here. A relatively minor example is shown on the right. The subject is the Davis Family, of whom my dear Wife of 40 years is a member and is less than 18 months old in this photograph. To the left are a couple of rather worse examples, the lower of which portrays my mother and step-father. My father, who appears below with his mother, died when I was a baby. Many such photos have been made more viewable with a bit of patient retouching. There is no doubt that AI technology will make this process easier in the not too distant future.

I realise that these galleries have limited appeal but I felt that I should do something to record and keep for posterity some kind of archive and since I am the last Courtney in this branch of our family tree, I felt a duty to do it.