Bruce Watt Photography owner Dave Edmonds is ready to retire. Photo / Sonya Holm
Bruce Watt Photography owner Dave Edmonds is ready to retire. Photo / Sonya Holm
Bruce Watt Photography closes its doors today after 70 years of serving Palmerston North.
Clocking up 130 years of photography experience between them, three men have been the face of the shop for the past 20 years: owner Dave Edmonds, son of original owner Stewart Watt, and Fraser Kitt.
“Things have changed a lot in that time,” Edmonds said. “It was very film-orientated back then. There was no such thing as digital.”
However, it was not a lack of business that led to the closing.
“I was ready to retire,” Edmonds said. “We tried to sell the business, but there were no takers. And our lease is up.”
The shop’s original owner, Bruce Watt, started with a film studio in George St in the early 1950s. The store then shifted to retail and moved to Fitzherbert Ave.
After Bruce Watt died unexpectedly in 1985, the family continued to run the store, selling it to Edmonds in 1990.
Two years later, Edmonds moved to The Square, where the store has stayed for 30 years.
During that time, the photography industry has changed enormously, he said.
“Cameras weren’t really a big part of our business in the last few years. It was mainly digitising old photos, slides, negatives, restoring photos, copying old videos, digitising tapes and movies.”
They would be asked to do rush funeral jobs.
“Someone comes in and the funeral is 24 hours away. Usually, they’re pretty emotional and they’ve got a couple of hundred photos they want digitised at short notice. Everything is dropped, and you rush to work on that as quick as you can,” Edmonds said.
Stewart Watt holds a disposable camera that has become popular with the younger generation. Photo / Sonya Holm
Stewart Watt recalls “the lady who came over from Australia and discovered all these family old black-and-white negatives she wanted digitised before she returned”.
“There were 900 negatives. And I, perhaps overly enthusiastically, said, ‘No trouble getting them done by next Tuesday’.”
And the store still sold and developed film, with a revival in film-based cameras, especially among young people drawn to disposables and “old-school technology”.
Watt was a schoolboy helping his father when he first got into cameras. Edmonds describes him as “one of the most knowledgeable people in New Zealand on older cameras”.
After 20 working together, there are plenty of memories. Watt jokes he’s the “store comedian”.
They remember the day Watt surprised them – and himself – by revealing he could rap.
There was a busker outside the store, and the volume made it difficult to talk to customers.
A request to move on had been ignored, and Watt says: “I don’t know quite what came over me.”
“I do not sing. I do not have a singing voice. It was the spur of the moment.”
Watt went outside and performed his own rap song, using the busker as inspiration for his impromptu lyrics.
The busker took the hint and moved on.
Reflecting on the end of an era, and the years spent preserving memories for the people of Palmerston North and the region, Watt has his favourite quote from Captain Lawrence Oates, part of Scott’s ill-fated Antarctic exploration team.
“Realising he was going to hold up their attempt to get to the supply base because of problems with his feet, he said, ‘I’m just stepping outside and I may be some time’. He basically left the tent and was never seen again.
“So, we thought come Friday afternoon [March 31], we’re just stepping out and we may be some time,” Watt said.
Sonya Holm is a freelance journalist based in Palmerston North.
