Plymouth Photo Studio

In the late 80"s to the early 90"s downtown Rochester took some major steps to up it's game. The East side of town from Mid Town to four corners, State and Main were finally upgraded from old deteriorating sidewalks to a composite pink paver. Although there were many complaints on the choice of materials etc... it was a big difference to what had been there. It took more than a few more years and the renovation of the sidewalks were extended from State down to Plymouth Avenue. I was always amazed that a major American City had blacktop for it's sidewalks for so many years. The Photo Studio had a big old sign that covered up a nice window and some old signage that got a fresh coat of paint and some cleaning up. The next step was to renovate everything and upgrade the interior, both architecturally and equipment wise.

I think it was in my sophomore year, when the school held a photo show for all years of the photography school. I don't remember if they did this year after year, but I was motivated to enter some work and was surprised to see after they were hung that my two entries had be chosen to be part of the RIT permanent collection. I had done both of these shots for an assignment on illustrating a magazine article about a post war couple and my go to models, my roommate and his girlfriend Brian and Gretchen, filled the bill. Coincidently they are married and live in Cape Cod. RIT was a very positive experience, and I learned a lot about the skills needed to be a good commercial photographer. After graduation, many a door opened when the employer found out I was a graduate. The school didn't always have the best of professors, but many of them inspired us to do some good work and as I stated, gave us some important skills to be competent advanced photographers. The best aspect of RIT was the fact at that point in film photography, they had hundreds of state of the art darkrooms, processing equipment, and studios, full of hot lights and strobe lighting equipment, add to the being surrounded by a lot of talented students and you had a very competitive and creative enviroment.