Photography Goes "Back To Future" with Film: OldSchoolPhotoLab.com Provides Film ('Lo-Fi') Services Via Internet

Dover, NH, July 02, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Film has staged a comeback. Photographers frustrated with the impersonality and blandness of digital images have remembered what drew them to photography in the first place: personal expression. Since many local photo labs have been driven out of business, photographers are turning to the Internet for their film processing needs. One of the few surviving independent labs, Photosmith Imaging in Dover, NH, has begun www.OldSchoolPhotoLab.com, a website offering developing for a wide array of film—from the common to the obscure—to Internet customers.

OldSchoolPhotoLab.com emphasizes simplicity: print a prepaid mailer, indicate which services you’d like on a simple order form, drop your film in a USPS drop box, and wait a week or so for your negatives, scans and prints. “Everybody’s busy,” says owner Steve Frank. “We want to make processing film as easy as possible—we think it is key to keeping film alive.” Frank is also convinced that for ‘post-digital’ photography to take hold, film-related services must remain affordable. Ironically, the Internet helps make that possible. “Since the Internet lets us take our business nation-wide, we’re able to offer very competitive prices for film processing,” Frank explains.

The analog renaissance has gone further back than the 35mm era to retrieve older formats, capturing images with 110, 126 and 127 cameras. Frank capitalizes on his forty years in the photography business to offer developing for all these kinds of film and more: OldSchoolPhotoLab.com offers developing for films that go back as far as a hundred years ago. The website also offers information and resources for people who want to enrich their knowledge of vintage photography.

Even film photography has been changed by the Internet era. Though OldSchoolPhotoLab.com’s customers take their pictures on film, they can opt to have their negatives scanned so they can share their images online. Further OldSchoolPhotoLab.com is using the Internet to create a community of film lovers, sponsoring a collective of photographers called the Lo-Fi Revolution. On Old School Photo Lab’s Facebook page, there’s a monthly photo contest for customers, with a prize of free services.

“Old-school” does not refer only to analog over digital photography—it also reflects Frank’s way of doing business. “For years we were a Main Street business. I knew what each of our customers wanted—whether they preferred 3x5 or 4x6, matte or glossy,” says Frank. “With OldSchoolPhotoLab.com we are offering that same individualized service on a broader scale.” The images of Frank’s longtime customers and lab technicians are featured on OldSchoolPhotoLab.com—“old-school” indeed.

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