Yellow daylight filter in paper wrap: Lieutenant Alan Queale, Official Photographer, BCOF

30mm circular yellow filter with no frame or identification number, wrapped in a folded square of paper that has 'Y1' rubber-stamped onto the front - the '1' has been overwritten in pen with a '2'. This is itself stored in a thin card wrapper that has 'Y1' and '30' rubber-stamped on it.

Alan Queale was born in Boonah, Queensland on 16 November 1908 and enlisted in June 1940. Under service number QX6717 he served in the Middle East with 2/1 and 2/2 Ordnance Stores as a technical storeman from September 1940 until January 1943, reaching the rank of sergeant.

During his time in the Middle East, he used a simple Ensign Double 8 still camera to privately produce six albums of photographic portraits and studies of buildings, a format he would reproduce when he worked in Japan. Arriving back in Australia, he was transferred to 2 Base Ordnance Depot in Melbourne before being transferred to Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) in March 1944, serving with them in New Guinea (an experience he found "rubbish"). He applied for a transfer to the Military History Section in July 1945, where he worked with No 2 Military History Field Team in New Guinea until February 1946.

Queale worked with the Military History Section (MHS) from 1946-47 in Japan, photographically documenting the activities of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) and aspects of Japanese life post-war, including the demilitarisation of the country, before being made the Officer in Charge (with the rank of lieutenant) of the MHS from February 1947 to March 1949. His photos from his service in the Middle East as well as Japan are searchable under his name on the AWM database.

After he was discharged from the Army in August 1949, Queale continued to take and collect photographs, and became well-known in Queensland for his work as an amateur historian and collector of art and artifacts. His work is notable for its unusually fine aesthetic values, as well as for what it reveals about Australia’s view of Asia in the immediate post-war period.

This unframed and unnamed yellow filter appears to use the Wratten numbering system and thus would be used to absorb "ultraviolet radiation and heighten contrast of clouds against blue sky"; it was also used for high-altitude photography. It is wrapped in its original paper and card storage - possibly indicating an early, pre-plastic but post-war issue.