I decided to take a decent break away from the desk over the winter holidays. After endless of hours, it was very much needed. Now that I have settled into the new year a little, I am hoping to be able to dedicate as much time to this project as I had in 2021. The main objective remains to restore as many images as I can and share them to the website and the Instagram account. If possible, I'd love to be able to publish a book this year. I just haven't figured out if I want to do a smaller themed series or simply wait to do one big publication with all of the best images...

4084 scans, 100+ hours and 8 months later, I am thrilled to finally complete this mammoth of a task. It is an incredibly satisfying feeling knowing that every negative has been scanned, tagged and indexed for long term management. This will make my work far easier to operate with and keep track. Next steps.... restoration, editing & sharing!

After some time off to finally see family since the pandemic, I've had the energy to get back into it and I'm thrilled to hit such a big milestone. The end of the scanning process is in sight!

I've been using a late 2012 MacBook Pro over the course of this project and I feel I was due an upgrade before I stuck into editing. I decided to go for a desktop this time and luckily the iMac has finally been refreshed and is running on the latest M1 chip. This is going to massively help with the tedious task of photo editing and restoration.

I think I have finally hit over the half way point now with over 2500 negatives scanned. There were some interruptions throughout this last batch...

Back on track with over 1200 slides scanned and indexed. Few hundred slides left and then it's onto the rolls of film.

After an unexpected 2020 (in more ways than one), I've decided to take a whole new and refreshed approach to this project by starting over, literally from scratch. Since there was unimaginable interest in the project, the main problem I kept facing was realising how the project, the collection, wasn't ready. Not only did we discover more of Jack's collection but my initial approach was fast and careless, and so I could only offer some of Jack's work with a lack of consistency and management. It was a mess. Which is why I've decided to start over and do it properly. I've bought some negative storage boxes, sheets, labels and created an index for record keeping. This way I can organise, label, tag, record and digitise the whole collection in a consistent manner for the long term. I know this will probably take up most of 2021 but once it's done, it's done. Hold tight!

More boxes were discovered in storage, and we think we've got everything now. This is great news and truly exciting however it has now added more workload for me. I must say I adore the the old school Heinz Baked Beans box. Click 'Read more' to see more photos.

With huge thanks to everyone who has shared Jack's story and images, we have now surpassed 10,000 Instagram followers! I remember being over the moon with just 1,000 followers, this is unreal. With such a big audience, I'm now thinking about the direction of this project... stay tuned...

I truly am lost for words... Jack's photos and his story has spread to corners of the world I would never have imagined. I am forever grateful to everyone who has taken interest and sent me messages of appreciation, it means the world!

I recently managed to figure out how to allow photos on the website to be purchased with Fotomoto. I love it as it's completely automated and requires very little management from my side. So far the results look great and with a happy customer, all the better. Enabling some sort of income is really going to help me cover the cost of equipment, keeping the site live and other investments I have made to carry out the project.

I am fortunate enough that I am in possession of one of Jack's camera, the Asahi Pentax K Auto-Takumar 55mm f/1.8. Although it's not in the greatest working condition, I'd love to see if I can get it serviced and fully functioning again. There is another camera I have seen used in his photos which is the Agfa Super Silette Apotar 45mm f/1:3.5, however we can't seem to locate this one. See more photos by clicking 'Read more'.

This was something I really didn't know how to do at first but I got some advice from a Documentary Photographer who suggested I reach out to some editors of various publications and see if they would be interested to run a story. After a few email exchanges, it was really just that simple! The response so far has been incredible and has given me the drive to put more time and effort into this project.

After a few weeks of researching scanners, I ended up setting my eyes on the Epson V850. I'm not really interested in some of it's gimmick-type software features as I do all my editing and restoration in Lightroom/Photoshop but in regards of the overall scan quality, I am very impressed. This model also comes with two sets of each negative holders which is very useful as I can set the negatives in the template whilst the other is scanning to help speed up the process a little bit.