My father-in-law Tom Sharp died on 9th September aged 92. He was cremated yesterday in Leicester.

For the funeral reception we wanted to display some photographs of him from his earlier life. Using window light, I put the old photos on the living room floor and, using a tripod, took photos of them.

I imported the photographs into Lightroom, made some adjustments & saved them out into Photoshop. I then tidied them up, removed hundreds of dust particles & sorted out some scratches & tears, converted them info black & white (originals were B&W but photographed in colour).

I printed them out on my Epson R220 & then mounted them onto boards for display at his service.

Tom was born in 1916 during the Battle of Verdun. As a result, he was named ‘Thomas Verdun Sharp’. As he grew up, ‘Verdun’ developed into the nickname ‘Vod’.

He married Gladys during the War, managing to get leave for the wedding but having to go back to the Navy the very next day. He was married to Gladys until her death in 2002.

The original wedding photo was color retouched, as was the tradition in those days before colour photography was widely available for everyone.

He served on 4 ships during his time in the Navy from 1940 to 1946. In the crew shot below, Tom is 2nd from the left in the back row.

Although Tom was 92 years old when he died, his death came suddenly & unexpectedly.

He was a loving father, father-in-law & grandad to three. He was a truly lovely man & will be sadly missed.

Rest in peace, Dad.