The nostalgic 1950s photos which were almost lost forever

An amateur photographer’s images from the 1950s have been generating fresh interest more than a decade after they were almost lost forever.

Ray Stokes took his Voigtlander camera with him when he travelled on his motorbike around the UK and to places including Italy, Germany and Switzerland.

After his death at the age of 88, his son Simon rescued the collection of old slides which his mum Jill was thinking about throwing away.

When he started the lengthy process of scanning all the images he discovered more than 2,000 pictures from his father’s life and travels.

There were pictures of people and landmarks around Scotland and the UK, along with images taken on the continent.

Ray had served in the RAF and was shot down over Germany during World War Two. He was taken prisoner after parachuting to safety.

One of the sites he later visited on his motorbike was the area which had been the target of that RAF mission.

Ray, who lived in the Blaby and Whetstone areas of Leicestershire, died in 2012.

Simon uploaded some of his father’s images to a photo sharing site in 2017.

He also made a print of one image – showing seagulls at Aberdeen harbour – which hangs on his wall at home.

Simon, 58, from Enderby in Leicestershire, posted the picture on social media last weekend and was surprised by the reaction.

“I thought it was a good image which possibly deserved to be seen, with an interesting back story, and it might generate some interest,” he told BBC Scotland News.

“However, I wasn’t quite expecting the response it has generated – I’m totally blown away.”

The one image has had more than 4,000 likes and scores of complimentary comments, with one person describing it as “otherworldly, like a watercolour painting emerging out from a time labyrinth”.

Simon said his dad would be “scratching his head” at the interest the pictures had generated all these years later.

He said he had inherited a love of photography from his dad – and that it was “scary” to think that all those images could have been lost.