Photography student keen to reunite photos with owner

Photography student Joshua Goulding wants to find the owner of these photos. Photo / ODT

Aoraki Polytechnic photography student Joshua Goulding is keen to restore a family's lost memories of a Fijian trip, after buying an old Kodak Instamatic camera from a Dunedin recycling store.

Mr Goulding (22) was surprised to find a roll of film still in the camera when he bought the old Instamatic 233 camera, from Rummage, the recycling store at the Green Island Landfill, a fortnight ago.

Photo restored from the camera bought from a recycling store. Photo / ODT

This model camera was apparently manufactured in the late 1960s and early 1970s, raising the possibility the film may have been sitting in the camera for more than 30 years.

When he later inquired at a camera shop about having the photographs developed, he was advised the film was thin and in fairly poor condition.

But 13 images, some rather blurred and faded, were subsequently salvaged from the 24-shot roll.

These colour images are from a holiday or official group visit to Fiji, one showing a group of European women standing beside a bus bearing the name Nausori, a Fijian town about 20km from the capital, Suva.

Other photographs depict a woman sitting beside a stone plaque, near a tropical tree, and another appears to depict a building at Queen's High School, Dunedin, perhaps taken in the 1970s.

The photos are thought to be at least 30 years old. Photo / ODT

Mr Goulding recently advertised in the ODT lost and found section, trying to trace the film's owner, but without success.

Mr Goulding, who is studying for a year-long certificate in digital photography at the polytechnic's Dunedin campus, is passionate about old cameras and owns about eight of them, including his latest acquisition, the Instamatic.

A photo from a Fiji trip. Photo / ODT

Born in South Africa, he has been keen on outdoors environmental photography since moving to New Zealand with his family in 2006.

It would be a ''really cool feeling'' to give the images back to their owners, because ''photographs are precious'', and it would be like returning part of an owner's memories, he said.

''It would be such a nice surprise for these people to get their photographs back.''

A photo restored from the camera. Photo / ODT