The photography of an Edwardian gentleman balloonist in trouble was published in the Daily Mirror and the newspaper paid Charles Brown a fee of a half-guinea.
The art-editor of the Daily Mirror, Hannen Swaffer asked Charles Brown to consider a career in newspaper photography when he left school and he joined aged 16 to learn how to develop film and print photographs in the in-house Daily Mirror darkrooms under the guidance of Bernard Alferi.
After continuing to work on photographic assignments for the Daily Mirror in the United Kingdom, he was eventually drafted to the 532nd Agricultural Depot, Royal Engineers as a medical orderly based at Wrexham, Wales.
[2] After the success of the Southern Railway poster, this allowed Charles Brown to expand and diversify his freelance press business to include the developing aviation in the 1920s and 1930s.
A wartime commission for Flying magazine in the United States included a rare supply of Kodachrome and Ektachrome film.