Please read this Introduction first.
We, the Spiller family, welcome you to this site. As most of you will know, Russell Spiller operated Batchelor’s Candid Studios, Napier, for many years. During that time he took photos for weddings, christenings, twentyfirsts and many other family and public events.
Sadly, Russell passed away in July, and now the family are beginning the huge task of sorting out decades of photos and negatives which have been in storage since Russell retired. We recently moved these from storage, back to the family home, and it took four, yes four station wagon loads to do it. Given the size of a single roll of film, you can imagine how many there were to fill up four station wagons!
We know that many people will want to claim their photos, or perhaps, their parents or grandparents photos. Maybe even photos of friends and loved ones. So we are going to up load them here, the ones we can scan. We will include as much detail as we can find to help identify the people in each photo, because we know they won’t look now, as they did when the photos were taken.
The Spiller Family are putting these photos on this website as a service to try and unite them with people who will value them for the memories of loved ones or events. We recognize that there are potential events where family photos may have been lost, such as house fires, marriage break ups etc., and therefore finding replacements, if they exist, may be of great value to someone. We are not asking for payment, but a small donation to help cover the costs of this huge task, packaging and postage is always appreciated.
Because there are many thousands to go through, this is an enormous task and will take, I suspect, many months to complete. So keep checking back. You never know when you will recognise someone. In fact, the best option is to subscribe to the website. That way you’ll receive an email each time more photos are uploaded.
If you don’t want to make a donation, please send us a postage paid, self addressed envelope. We will let you know what size and the amount of postage needed after you have filled in the form on the Claims Form page.
Disclaimer: There are literally tens of thousands of negatives and photos. We have no way of verifying the legitimacy of anyones claim, so we will be filling claims on a FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE basis only. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Please note that we are not a photography store. We cannot enlarge, make copies, print photos, fix damage or any such things. We are just finding homes for the photos etc that have been left behind.
If you wish to have changes or fixes made to the photos you receive, we highly recommend FotoFix who are located in Twyford, just out of Hastings for this. Their work is excellent and their rates are more than reasonable.