The Photo Finishers
Celebrating 21 years of hometown photo, video excellence
“It seems like only yesterday in some ways,” said Waco Hill, owner of The Photo Finishers on Albert Pike.
“Since 1988 I had worked for the largest photo lab/studio operation in the country, been a professional photographer in my own right (photographing in studio, on location and weddings) and accepted a position at a professional lab environment for one of the largest ‘pro labs’ in the country in a ‘you are the manager in the office’ position. But after settling in, I found that I missed the hands on interaction (being able to help clients). I discovered I didn’t like being cooped up in an office all day ‘out of the action,’ so I felt like going out on my own was the thing to do. So, way back in 1996 I took the entrepreneurial plunge and opened The Photo Finishers in Hot Springs.”
For 21 years, The Photo Finishers has been serving the photo imaging needs of clients in Hot Springs and all over the United States. From very humble beginnings, the list of basic photographic services has expanded to encompass truly professional old fashioned full service processing and printing services such as film developing (color and B&W, 35 mm and medium and large format), cutting-edge printing from digital files (camera and phone created files), with all files individually color and density evaluated by trained human eyes prior to printing so the finished prints are as good as they can be, video services, professional photography, and Photo Education Classes. A self-service kiosk is available for those clients who wish to print their own images with all photographs printed on professional Kodak Paper.
“The Photo Finishers has always been a unique enterprise, and to my knowledge, we offer the most complete variety of imaging services (photo and video) available anywhere under one roof, and I think we have been very successful with providing our clients with the kind of services they want and just can’t find anywhere else,” Hill said. “It’s really hard for me to think of any photo imaging service — traditional or digital — that we have not provided over the years. It seems like we do it all right here in our little shop on Albert Pike. Basically, we do all the things that others do, and most everything they can’t. When I meet someone new and they ask what do we do, I just don’t know where to start!” While it would be impractical to list every service offered, here are some of the highlights provided.
Color and black and white film processing printing and photo copying
The Photo Finishers has process and printed film and negatives from almost the beginning of photography. Large color and black and white negatives, glass negatives, tin types, Oval prints and everything in between. “We started out with just a couple of machines processing 35 mm, 110, 126 amateur film and Medium format (120 and 220 mm) professional films, and we still process those formats in color and black and white. Just like in the beginning, we still analyze every negative for color and density to make our clients prints the best that they can be. In addition to printing, we can digitize and archive old negatives and prints for archival storage on drives, CDs and DVDs. In fact we can even process and print Kodak disk film and Seattle Filmworks right in our store.”
Printing from digital cameras, cards, phones and drives
These days, digital cameras are everywhere even in our phones. What sounded like fantasy 21 years ago is reality today. The Photo Finishers can print from most any digital source including the files from phones digital cameras and cards. “It can be very challenging and frustrating for someone who is not a ‘techie’ to understand how to get the images off their devices so they can share, preserve and print them. At The Photo Finishers, our clients send us images to print via our website, on flash drives and we take them directly off phones and cameras in the store, printing everything from wallet size up to posters in house.”
Custom enlargements and restorations from any size original photo or artwork
The Photo Finishers helps clients Custom sized professional poster and enlargement printing is available at the Al-