Twenty years ago this month between my junior and senior years of high school, I got my first job at a place called Moto Photo, and I entered the world of photography from the unique vantage point of a photo technician. 2002 was an in the midst of an interesting era in the history of photography. For the first time ever, consumer-grade digital cameras were at a marginally passable level in affordability and resolution, but decent quality was still a long way off. As the digital revolution was unfolding the analog era was quietly fading, but there was still a demand for the photo lab and people still wanted their film processed in an hour or less. And so, with the help of my parents nudging me out of the nest, I answered an ad in the paper (another bygone era) for summer help at the local photo lab.

I remember my first day of work. School had just let out for the summer and I needed a ride, but no one was able to help me, so my mom got this guy Pader, who was just about to graduate and had a crush on my sister, to drop me off. Though I’m sure he probably thought he had the best intentions and was playing around, Pader was a guy who took things a little too far. Recalling the previous summer when my mom had me stay at his house so he could be my personal trainer – and how awful an experience that was for me what with could be considered borderline torture in the guise of sadistic exercises – all I could do is dread the car ride to work. I already had a lot to worry about in showing up and making good first impressions, so it didn’t help I needed to worry about my first ride to work.

My worries were justified. Pader showed up at my house wearing a straw cowboy hat and he was in a very good mood, but I was nervous. I got in the car and he blasted some country music. I didn’t know what music he normally listened to, but I didn’t think “country” and this hat of his seemed out of place for him and what you’d expect from a teenager in New Jersey. Just outside my development, which was fairly remote from civilization by New Jersey standards, there were miles of forested backroads that lead to more populated areas. As soon as we turned onto the main road out of my development, Pader stopped the car in the middle of the road, lowered the music, and told me to get out. Ha ha. Some favor this was turning out to be. My heart sunk. He told me to go into this field by the road and pick out two blades of straw – one for him and one for me. He said the only way he’d let me back in the car and take me to work was if I placed the hay in my mouth the entire car ride while we listened to country music. So there I was, standing in the middle of the street with stalks of hay in my hands, deciding if this job was worth the embarrassment I’d have to endure. Then I thought about the embarrassment of not showing up to work or what I’d say to my parents… lots of things went trough my head really.

A lot was on my mind as I was about to start my first day of work at my first job, so that stalk of hay resting on my lips, twirling in the wind from the open widows of Pader’s car as he blasted and sang along to country music along Route 9 was honestly a blur. He pulled up to the Moto Photo in Marlboro Plaza and told me he better see me walk into the store with that straw in my mouth. As soon as I got out of the car, I spit it out and that was the last time I saw that madman. It became a quickly forgotten experience as I was almost immediately introduced to my awesome new coworkers and the crash course of operating a photo lab and store.

Moto Photo had three elements to it. The front of the store had a retail space for frames and photo nick nacks like camera cases and disposable cameras. Towards the left and to the back was the portrait studio. And just behind the main counter was the meat of the operation: the lab. The customer facing area had the register, an area for accessing envelopes containing developed photos, a shelf for boxes of film, a passport photo section, and an area for discussing studio work. Behind that was the film processing machine which was about the size of a large refrigerator on its side, and just next to that was the printer, which was the size of a Zamboni. In that area was a place to sort photos, cut negatives, copy prints, and a Windows NT computer for scanning film to CD-ROM (and playing Hoyle Texas Hold’Em).

In the early days of this job, my task was to help with the register, help sort photos, and clean the machines. The film processor was able to automatically develop rolls of film within about 15-20 minutes. There was a tool for extracting the tips of film from their canisters which needed to be cut and spliced to these plastic cards with slots. Each card could hold two rolls of film and you’d place it into the feeder, and seal it up to prevent light from leaking in. It would move up and down through different vats of chemicals inside the machine and come out the other end fully developed. Each night, I would need to open the machine up and remove all the rollers as I topped off the chemicals. The rollers would need to be cleaned and soaked in the back of the store. I remember my first week, I accidentally misplaced one of the screws that held the rollers in place and got an angry phone call from my boss the next day who told me I ruined her business for the day. I thought I was fired and didn’t show up that afternoon, but it seems she found the screw and didn’t tell me, so yeah (but who doesn’t have a backup of something that important???)

As I gained more responsibilities, I learned how to print, which overall wasn’t that hard, but I can imagine is very wasteful if you don’t know what you’re doing. It was certainly a lot easier than changing out the light sensitive photo paper in pitch black. Basically you sit at the head of the printer and take in freshly developed film hanging from a rack and run it through a special plate. The machine projects a light through the film and you see the image on a TV screen. Then you apply the most rudimentary brightness and color corrections. The machine would print out a few prints on special paper and you’d make adjustments based on a few test prints. If the photo was too yellow, you’d shift the correction to blue. Too red would need a cyan increase. Too magenta would need more green. It’s stuff I can easily do in Photoshop today, but even still today, what you see on the screen almost never comes out of the printer the same way. There’s lots of waste in photo printing.

Yes, photo technicians saw everything. If you wanted your film developed back in the day, most good photo labs had guys like me checking every photo for color. I saw it all, but most of what I saw was the usual birthday party, family gathering, and vacation. I saw a few sexual things and a few drug-related stuff, but most of it was typical photos we all have in photo albums and shoeboxes under our beds. The worst thing I ever saw was documentation of a dead body being exhumed from an improper burial. It was gruesome. While I was employed at Moto Photo, the Robin Williams film, One Hour Photo, was released which prompted public scrutiny over what goes on in photo labs. In the film, Robin Williams’s character, Sy Parrish, works at a photo lab and seems to get a little overly invested in his customers’ lives. Sy becomes involved in one of his customers’ marital issues and is also shown keeping copies of their prints on a wall in his house. I personally think the timing of this movie with the rising interest in digital cameras ushered in the end of consumer film developing.

As I mentioned earlier, part of my job was to clean the machines. Part of the film processer cleaning involved logging the film count on a chart on the wall. This number was important for many reasons, including keeping track of chemical usage, keeping tabs on the machine’s upkeep, seeing the industry slowly crumbling into obscurity. Moto Photo didn’t have the ability to process digital photos. Some labs had special kiosks for memory cards, but this particular lab was 100% analog with the exception of our film scanner. As the number of rolls of film decreased, the possibility of the lab shutting down was it’s inevitable fate unless my boss was willing to invest in digital. The photo studio did take in lots of work for Christmas cards and whatnot, but even then, as card templated became digital, there wasn’t much this lab could do to keep up.

By 2004, that Moto Photo store was sold to a new owner, Yuri. Moto Photo was a franchise operation so each store was privately owned and each owner would pay royalties to Moto Photo Corporate. Each store operated a little differently and had different equipment, but they all used the materials and whatnot corporate sent over. The new owner got rid of the old Zamboni-esque printer and brought in his new digital-ready printing equipment. He brought in a new computer that had Photoshop and even set up a kiosk for customers to import their digital photos to our print queue. During this transition, half the staff quit because he paid us under the table and the general vibe was ruined under Yuri’s reign. I stayed because I was happy to apply my newfound Photoshop abilities to the test, but in all honesty it was a miserable place. Yuri was a cheat and a liar and he made me miss my old boss. But times were changing and the photo lab was not future proof. I quit, primarily because I needed to attend college in New York City and this job wasn’t cutting it, but also because I didn’t want to be in that environment. And just like my first day on the job where I needed a ride to work, on my last day, I needed a ride home because my 1993 Grand Marquis finally died in the lot.

When I started Moto Photo, I had just finished my junior year of high school where I was just starting to learn Photoshop. My work at the photo lab taught me many things about photography and as I entered my senior year, I continued learning more about graphic design. This era of my life eventually lead to where I am to this day and it’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since it all began. After I quit Moto Photo, I finally got my first DSLR, the original Canon Rebel. And after that, it’s been another 18 years of learning and progressing in the world of photography.

Not many people getting into photography today can say they got into it after working at a photo lab. Not many photo labs even exist anymore. From the Fotomats found in many parking lots all over the country, to the labs within grocery stores, to the full service stores like Moto Photo, very few places like this exist. They are almost as rare as video rental stores. The Moto Photo I worked at is now a boutique as I observed in 2012. A few Moto Photos are in operation today, but I doubt they process film. It was truly a unique job to have at a very interesting era in photography.