Background

Digitising the V.C. Browne and Son Photograph Collection - Roger Barclay

The decision to do something with the large number of photographic plates, films and prints that had accompanied (and impeded) Bill and Mary Browne’s various household moves, was a gradual one. I married into the Browne family in 1975. My wife Beth is Bill Browne’s second daughter. Bill had just bought his father’s Aerial Photography business and was leaving a career as a primary school teacher to follow in his father’s footsteps. Whilst the business continued to flourish for a number of years, it eventually succumbed to a mix of market and photographic technology changes.

I have always had a strong interest in the collection, which contains a great deal of detail of how New Zealand society has evolved. I believe it to be a significant national asset and as such it should be preserved and made accessible to all New Zealanders. A number of factors were dictating that some action be taken.

• The negative stock was deteriorating and had a finite life
• The collection was poorly documented, making it difficult to find anything. Both V.C. Browne and Bill Browne had relied heavily upon their memories to access images and whilst some cataloguing of the approximately 35,000 images had occurred, this existed as fragmented paper lists
• There was a risk of the collection being broken up, either through accidental misplacement of boxes of negatives, or the sale of portions of the collection.

The arrival of affordable large format negative scanners and internet sites such as Google Earth enabled the work of scanning and documenting the negatives to commence. I began the difficult and time consuming process of scanning and identifying negatives in 2004.
At the time of writing (August 2013) the following have been achieved:

• Approximately 31,000 of the 35,000 images have been scanned, at a resolution of 800 dpi.
• All rolls of film and most of the boxes of photographic plates have been outlined.
• A significant proportion of unidentified images have had their location fixed using Google Earth.
• The 25 x 16mm movie reels have been digitised and those of general interest made available
• A web-site containing a searchable catalogue of all scanned images and documented film rolls/plates has been implemented.

There are four goals that underpin this project. They are as follows (in priority sequence):

• Preserve the collection
• Make it available to all New Zealanders
• Gain some recognition for the legacy of V.C and Bill Browne’s pioneering aerial photographic work
• Cover the costs of capturing, maintaining and disseminating the collection

Acknowledgements

VC Browne Aerial Photograph Collection would like to acknowledge the following people who have made significant contributions to the identification of the images contained in this site:

• Andrew Thomas - Christchurch: Andrew has made (and is continuing to make) an enormous contribution to the collection. He has library experience and a geographer by training who has applied his considerable knowledge and skill to improve the collection's meta-data. Through his efforts, the number of missing image descriptions have been considerably reduced and the accuracy and content have been enhanced.
• Bernard Kingsbury - Archivist Cust Museum: Identification and annotation of the 300+ images of the Cust Grand Prix.
• Bruce Raines - Timaru: Assistance with identification of Southern Canterbury and Otago images.