'Snapshots in Time' is a book made up of about 80 high quality images selected by Mr Donaldson from an archive of photographs collected by Grampian Transport Museum over a period of 25 years.

Since his retirement as a helicopter pilot in 2002, Peter has, as a volunteer, become the museum's collections manager, official photographer and archiver.

He said: "Because I did photography, they asked me to photograph the collection. I became their archiver and when I finished photographing all the objects, I found boxes of photographs and tens of thousands of negatives, and that's what I've been working on during the past closed season."

The process wasn't without problems - firstly, the cost of a scanner was very high and with negatives of all shapes and sizes, using one wasn't all that practical, so Peter devised a method of photographing them instead.

He explained: "We bought an industrial lightbox for a very reasonable price, and this meant that I could get in really close - to about one and a half centimetres of the film surface. My camera has good manual control and, since some of the negatives were very faint, I had to give them a long exposure. We set up a darkroom in a corner and mounted the camera on a tripod."

Having the copied the photographs and negatives into digital format, Peter continued: "As the results appeared on the screen, they totally wowed me. Mike Ward, the Curator, and I, were determined we should try to get them into the public domain, and the book is the result of our discussions.

"This is the first of many - next year we could cover World War One to World War Two, then perhaps World War Two to the 1960s - we have enough images to keep us going for the next 20 years. But first we'll have to see how it sells and what the public response is."

Some of the photographs feature 'Postie Lawson', while he himself may have taken others. He was a colourful local character whose job as 'postie' was just one of his pursuits - he was also a photographer, carpenter, engineer and ingenious inventor, who became famous for his 'Craigievar Express', the steam tricycle built in 1895 to help him on his round. The Craigievar Express is an exhibit at the museum.


Snapshots in Time is available at the museum and will be officially launched today (Thursday), or it can be ordered by phone on (01975) 562292. It will also be on sale at selected outlets thought the area.