You'll have noticed that Tuesday's photo is a bit different from the usual. But what won't have been obvious is that it's a first step towards selling old photos on Gwulo.com. Here's the story so far....

From time to time people ask if they can buy copies of the photos shown on this site. Each time I've explained that 'sorry, they aren't my photos, so you'll need to contact the owner.' Then a couple of months ago the lightbulb went on and I thought, hold on, if people want to buy old photos of Hong Kong, why shouldn't they buy them here?

The Hong Kong Heritage Project (HKHP) was established in 2007 by Sir Michael Kadoorie with the mandate of safe-guarding the history of Kadoorie businesses, both past and present. Since then, HKHP has developed into a serious archive facility used by both students and researchers alike, with thousands of original papers, films and photos chronicling Hong Kong’s twentieth century narrative.

Last Saturday, Dr. Patrick Hase gave a very interesting talk on this subject. I managed to catch most of it on my digital camera, and Dr Hase has kindly allowed me to put it up on the internet for all to see. (The presentation slides are available for download too)

It's really worth watching - he obviously knows a huge amount about the subject, and is a very good speaker too (though he was suffering from a heavy cold on this day).