A Photographer's Day

The waves gently lapping on the shore, seagulls gliding through the air, a perfect photographic morning, until that is, the family arrive!

This 1935 whimsical film shows off all the tools at the service of the keen amateur filmmaker at the time, with slow motion, comic subtitles and the introduction of Kodachrome colour. The photographer in question – the managing director of a large worsted spinning company in Clayton West, Yorkshire – attempts to film his trip to the coast in peace, only to be regularly disturbed by his son’s antics: jumping off rocks, swimming and sunbathing.

This is one of an extensive collection of films made by Noel Beardsell in the 1930s and 1940s. Unfortunately we have been unable to identify the stretch of coast seen in the film. Beardsell also filmed the local Jubilee celebrations of King George V at Clayton West, near Bradford, in 1935, capturing the good time people had on that occasion; as an aside, his son David, seen in the film, recalls that he worked as a detective for the West Yorkshire Police as a specialist in photography. He would edit the films in a specially made dark room in his garage, adding useful, often comical, intertitles. He would then show these at large gatherings in his house. During the Second World War he also put on film shows at army bases.