Leslie Arthur Whitcomb - 1915 - 2010
 
Born September 1915 in Edmonton. His father was William Whitcomb, born in Petworth.
Marrying Kathleen in 1942 at Boscombe he served in India during the Second World War.
Temporarily residing with in-laws after the war, in Ilford, he then moved to Dudley Road, Brighton in 1945, where he lived in the same house for 65 years until his death on 23 October 2010.
 
His interest in amateur photography started before the War, and there were albums of scenic and army personnel from Kashmir with his first camera, continued in earnest when he returned to the UK. He developed and printed his own photos at home in the blacked out bathroom. He was a keen member of the Brighton and Hove Camera Club during the 1950’s and was successful in their annual exhibitions.
 
He also supplemented his income by offering photos to the producers of Town and Holiday Guides. A fair number were published in the short-lived Beauty of Sussex magazine 1950-1951.
 
Leslie worked as a clerk for S.M. Tidy a local Brighton haulage and construction company and knowing his expertise in photography the company used him to record the various projects they were working on, ending up at the end of each year with twelve subjects in a calendar.
 
He was meticulous with storage and labelling his photographs. His early black and white negatives and prints were incomplete and not in a suitable state to reproduce to a good standard on modern day pcs, but later on many of his more artistic photos were professionally scanned to pc. He went over to colour in Feb 1960. His early colour work was on glass slides and over time they had lost some of the definition, but the standards improved with Kodak. There were in excess of 10,000 colour slides and because of the storage area they were sold as an entire collection, but not before Peter had scanned a few hundred that were of local or general interest.
 
Leslie chose not to invest in digital cameras, but latterly in his life his interest in photography waned somewhat, so the use of digital and computers never really arose.
 
After his death, his son Peter has made considerable efforts to share some of his vast accumulation of photographs, namely with Geograph and a local Brighton archive collection, and more recently with the Gravelroots website.
 
Peter now also contributes many modern photographs to the Gravelroots site.