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The story goes back 115 years!.

In 1894 Walter Gardiner and his wife Annie established a photographic studio in Worthing on the West Sussex coast. Three generations of the Gardiner family continued to trade in Worthing, each putting a different emphasis on the type of work they wanted to undertake. Thus it changed over time from a Victorian portrait studio to a Weddings and portrait studio in the 1940's - 50's.
When grandson Derek Gardiner took charge in the early 1960's he saw an increased demand in Worthing for commercial photography and sought to specialise in commercial advertising photography.

In 1981 a 'youthful' Mike Hemsley joined the firm agreeing to buy the business from Derek Gardiner. Thus by the time of Dereks retirement from the firm it had secured its third century of trading. The advent of digital imaging, a wider spread of potential customers and the ability to trade via the internet ended the need for the large Worthing Studio in 2006. Mike has now relocated the business to the City of Norwich. From here he is able to travel throughout the UK to serve his existing customers and pro actively seek new ones!.

A consequence of such a long period of trading was the continually growing archive of negatives, prints and transparencies which dated from the present back to 1880. Many fragile glass plates formed a percentage of the early images, they required careful handling, identifing and scanning. The task was never a viable commercial venture for the studio which continued to shoot and add to the archive. Mike knew objectively that the archive had to be given over to West Sussex Library Services for the enjoyment of present and future generations. Thus in 2007 contact was made and the transfer of over 116,000 negatives and prints took place. See 'news' section for BBC Video coverage.