The Photo Finishers
Make your house a home by creating a personalized space with elegant decor that is not only beautiful but emotionally engaging. Nothing makes your house feel like a home more than custom portraits of your family used as elegant home decor pieces.
“I know,” says Waco Hill, of Waco Hill Fine Photography, “I recently lost my mother, and I can’t emphasize to you how much it means to me to have an adequately sized portrait of our original family hanging above my sofa in the den. Every time I walk into that room it fills my heart.”
In addition to being emotionally impactful, the portrait was created in a classic and timeless manner, and framed to complement the current décor of that room. Time and tastes change, but the love of family is a constant. At Waco Hill Fine Photography, the goal of every assignment is to create a timeless work of art that can be displayed no matter the fashion or decorating trends of the day.
“Whether I am working a portrait assignment or photographing a more pastoral or urban environmental project, one of the things that separates my photography from others is the time and care that is dedicated to creating just what my client desires the most,” says Hill.
If a family portrait, Hill indicated that he makes sure to determine how each family member will look their best and preplan the entire session so that it is fun, fast, and most importantly everyone looks absolutely stunning.
“I’m willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to make certain my clients are absolutely thrilled with their portraits and proudly display them prominently in their home. In fact, many clients have shared with me years later that the portraits we create together are their most prized possessions.”
In addition to custom created portraiture or custom environmental photography, there are other methods to creating a home environment that you cherish.
For example, If you would prefer to create décor utilizing old family photographs or photos you have created yourself either on film or digital, or need budget-friendly photography, Hill also owns The Photo Finishers at 1819 Albert Pike, a full-service portrait studio, photo and video laboratory right here 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 traditional true photographic 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.
Custom in-studio portraits for the budget-minded are available on site
If you feel that fine art photography may not be within your budget, portraits at Forever Yours Studio (a traditional true portrait studio located inside The Photo Finishers) are ready just a few minutes after the session.
Working by appointment, in studio sessions are fast and fun. You view your photographs immediately after the session, and place your order right then. The best part is, clients portrait packages are ready in just a few minutes, so no waiting for days or making multiple trips to pick up your finished portrait. Clients take the finished photographs home right after the session.
All photography work is guaranteed by the “100 percent You will Love them or Don’t Pay a Dime” guarantee.
“We are doing amazing photography with families and newborn babies (our Newborn Baby Special gives moms 12 months’ worth of sessions and a ‘I’m Growing’ baby panel for just $19.99), which are just gorgeous with amazing delivery times.”
Color and black and white film 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 neg-
atives, 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 20 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 Albert Pike Location as well full service old photo copy and restoration services.
“We have copied original photographs from tiny locket size up to 3-plus feet and made them look better than new, so we really are not limited as some other labs might be by original size or condition.” Video and audio tape transferred to CD and DVD
The advent of new technology has created many challenges and opportunities in all areas of the imaging industry but none more so than in video transfer and editing.
“We have been doing film to video and video slideshows since very early on, and we have continued to invest in new technology and training to provide services for all the new digital video file formats as well as the capability to migrate all the memories we have stored on film and analog media to modern storage devices such as DVD and CD.
Many people don’t know that we also are capable of transferring analog audio tape (reel to reel, cassettes, micro cassettes) and even vinyl records to CD format. The list of all the things we are capable of doing is really a bit mind boggling to me reflecting on where we started,” Hill says.
For more information about The Photo Finishers Custom Portrait, Decor, Photo, Video and Restoration Services call 501-624-4029 or visit www.thephotofinishers.com or www. fyportraits.com. To have Fine art Photography created by Waco Hill, visit www.wacohillphotography. com or call 501-321-WACO.