[JasonB]

Thanks Leo.

I wouldn't be too sad about Jim, he seems to have done well for himself. He was a succesful racing driver, he opened a succesful racing driver school, he got to work on Grand Prix, he had a car dealership, and he lived to the ripe old age of 98.

As Brian has said there are a lot of photos in his collection, I'd say getting on for 10,000. There are of course a lot of repeats, some that have faded, and some that weren't great. But I'll probably add a few more at some point. In fact I'd like to add a page on some of the technology, like the car firing cannon, the modified Ford GT 40 camera car, the remote pan and tilt cameras they fitted to the cars, and even the Cinerama system which the film used.

One of the interesting things about the contact sheets is the difference in quality between sheets developed by labs in each different country.

The sheets developed in Italy are meticulously produced. The negatives all line up perfectly, and are square with the edges of the photographic paper. They are all really well developed, with very few dust or scratch marks, and even now after more than 50 years they still retain all the clarity and contrast that you'd wish for.

The sheets devoped in France however, were faded, dirty, and haphazard, and they took a fair amount of work to clean up.

I don't know why their should be such a difference, but I couldn't help but admire the attention to detail of the Italian labs.