The photograph album of the Shimmin family includes 116 portrait photographs, mostly unlabelled and undated, 2 photographs of houses (1 probably Christchurch, the other Scotland?) one photograph of Apunaki? Fort in Taranaki, the other of a bridge on the Waimate Plains.

Most photographs are from Christchurch, but also Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin, Invercargill, Sydney, Melbourne, Naples, London, Nottingham, Southampton, Aberystwyth and Edinburgh. One photograph labelled Mary E. Deamer, 16 years, 1876; another Mary Louise Gordon Holmes, 1879.