My 1967 cover shot

I hope the ‘Back in the day’ feature hasn’t run its course, particularly as I was hoping that the 23 August 1967 issue might one day feature. The black & white cover photograph of an Irish guardsman was mine, and at 84 I think I may be the oldest of your readers to have had the honour of supplying an AP front cover. (Ten years later, on 2 March 1977, a second cover was taken up by my amingo photograph.)

Coming to the present century, I twice had the pleasure of being interviewed by David Clark for illustrated articles about my wildlife photography in 2002, and street photography in 2003.

Like many readers of my vintage, I am still photographing regularly, though I have largely scaled down my wildlife photography (metaphorically and literally) to concentrating on invertebrates. My street photography nowadays tends to be a by-product of travel photography, mainly in and around London. The results go to a wildlife picture library and to Alamy, where I have recently passed my three-hundredth sale.

The present period of enforced inactivity has given me an opportunity to scan Kodachrome transparencies up to 30 years old. No nostalgia here. I do wonder why Kodak persisted as long as it did with the inferior Kodachrome 200 version. I just wish that digital had been available ‘back in the day.’

Rod Williams

Apologies to our readers for the rude interruption to our ‘Back in the Day’ series. This was due to not having access to our archive for several months due to lockdown. But as I hope you have noticed it is now back, renamed, and expanded to a whole page instead of just a strip. This week, just for you, Mr Williams, we are featuring the 23 August 1967 issue. I’d be very interested to know if any of our readers had their picture on the cover earlier than that.