His photographs were used to produce picture postcards of the seaside towns and attractions in the South of England.

Although based in Bournemouth, Ridley's photographs span from Oxford in the north and Cornwall in the southwest to the Isle of Wight in the south.

The 1881 census records the family living in East Gate House, Sonning, near Reading.

By 1891, they lived at 3 Victoria Buildings, Old Christchurch Road, Holdenhurst, Bournemouth, with their children Walford and Winifred (born 1890 in Margate, Kent) and their housemaid.

By 1901, Miell had moved to Bournemouth with his wife, two children, and brother-in-law and was listed as an employer in a photographic business.

It seems that Miell did mostly portraiture in the studio while Ridley concentrated on landscapes, townscapes, and seaside shots – often to produce Cartes de Visite.

The cards are mostly coloured and would have been hand-tinted as part of the production process, which mostly happened in Germany, presumably ending with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Not much is known of Ridley after this period except that his health was failing, and much of the work of the photographic business fell to his daughter Winifred, who also struggled to keep it going, having to cope with nursing sick relatives and homing wartime refugees.

Over the years, some plates had gone missing some decayed, but the current collection of about 5000–6000 is safe, and the vast majority render superb images.

Now living in Cambridge, Mrs. Mole teamed up with local architect and photographer Bruce Stuart and university lecturer John Martin to begin capturing the glass images onto modern digital storage media while also attempting to identify and catalogue the images.

His photographs are a fine record of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, showing the time's dress, transport, industry, architecture, social life, and obsessions.

Ridley meticulously recorded the subject and location in ink on the glass plates themselves – something which, unfortunately, he did not do with many of the English photographs, presumably through familiarity.

In circa 1905, Ridley was responsible for the publication of a booklet entitled 'Sixty-One Views of The Rhondda Valley'[3] It is not yet clear if these photographs are part of, or in addition to, the collection currently discussed here.