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.
Victor Carlisle Brown 1900-1979
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 26,000 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.
Bill Browne and his wife Mary (1982)
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 (February 2010) the following have been achieved:
- Approximately 21,000 of the 27,000 images have been scanned, at a resolution
of 800 dpi.
- All rolls of film and most of all boxes of photographic plates have been
outlined.
- A significant proportion of unidentified images have had their location fixed
using Google Earth.
- 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