1917 Tasmanian Indian

VINTAGE 1917 COLOUR PHOTOGRAPH: motorcycle excursion to Ross, Tasmania. This very early and faded “PAGET COLOUR” photograph is by H J King, and that’s him riding the motorcycle. Lucy King (in the sidecar in these pictures) told me that these were taken ‘in her courting days’ when H J’s family owned the cycle shop in Launceston. They had the Tasmanian agency for ‘Indian’ Motorcycles. The image is from a glass lantern slide transparency, 3 1/4 inches square, which I copied to Kodachrome with Lucy’s permission in 1982. Paget colour was a fore-runner of the Finlay colour process, though its colours were not so true, and the fine primary colour dot-mosaic through which the emulsion was exposed, and later projected, used fugitive dyes which faded badly. I have tried every software manipulation known to recover what little colour remains in these Paget plates after 96 years, and this is the best that I can do with this and its companion slide. The Paget colour photography process was most notably used by Frank Hurley on the famous Shackleton Antarctic expedition of 1914-16. Hurley also subsequently used the Paget Process to take official Australian army photos of battles in the latter part of World War One. Thanks member Rodger Beimers for this interesting bit of Australian History & to all involved to give a us a little more appreciation of past times