A meticulously kept photographic archive is making it into the digital age.
Pressman Stephen Mansfield ended up working for The Scotsman newspaper.
But it was while working with papers in Renfrewshire over many years that he feels he captured some of his best work.
And Stephen, now 65, said: “I think the difference with local papers is people want you to be there and photograph them as part of local life.
“In the nationals you are probably the last thing folk want to see as normally it will be some disaster or hard news.”
Negatives have been kept faithfully in the former Barrhead resident’s home, all perfectly captioned.
Now, 30 years on, Stephen is scanning them and unleashing them onto his website for sale.
There are thousands of images, a real treasure trove capturing the spirit of the age.With the recent snowy weather, today we’ve published a selection of photos from the late seventies and eighties of winter in Barrhead and Neilston.
It certainly looks as if people took the snow more in their stride than today.
Children were encouraged to get outside and have snowball fights.
And council workers actually got out and cleared the pavements of snow by hand.
In his heyday, Stephen was always immaculately dressed and groomed, ready to meet Royalty at the drop of a hat if required.
And with more than a decade of taking photos in the Barrhead area he became rather well known.
Stephen said it’s been a pleasure scanning in the negatives to revive old memories.
He said: “I remember all the gala days, really hard work but great fun to be involved.
“And when I did the obligatory annual primary one class shots I love to capture candid images of the kids afterwards.
“They are among my all-time favourites.”
He added: “I find myself becoming lost in time when I look at the negatives.
“And I find myself saying, ‘I don’t remember that . . . that’s a good picture.’”
In those days everything was black and white and Stephen had to develop all the prints, dunking paper in trays of chemicals in the dark room.
Newspaper production staff would then have to photograph the image again to screenprint it onto the page.
Stephen added: “It really is easy nowadays, you know what it looks like right away and can correct it.
“I had no idea how my shots had turned out or if the exposure was wrong until the image appeared as I developed it.”
The good news is Stephen has “tons” of negatives he has yet to process recording life through the years.
Head onto his website https://photoarchiver.co.uk where he can send properly printed large images to customers at bargain prices.
