Daniel Jolly, owner of Clear Image Portrait Studio at 9023 State Avenue in Marysville, is taking a leap of faith by bucking recent trends and actually expanding his local business.

"We looked at a number of different services that are valuable to customers but not sustainable on their own," said Jolly. "By combining those services into one location and one business, they complement each other and make sense."

Jolly recently hosted a Business After Hours event at The Darkroom, the new storefront adjacent to the current studio location, to introduce the expanded services to Chamber of Commerce members. The February 10 event featured a ribbon-cutting by Mayor Dennis Kendall, wine supplied by Willis Hall Winery, and hors d'oeuvres by Pacific Rim Supper Club.

The Darkroom offers all the services of a standard photography lab, but in digital format. Jolly's trained staff members are experts at video transfers, scanning, and even custom framing. Although the business is far removed from the traditional darkrooms of old, with their toxic chemicals and painstaking processes, Jolly opted to use the traditional name to describe the studio's capabilities.

"If you have old VHS tapes that are fading, we can convert them to digital format so they'll last longer without degrading," Jolly explained. "Old family photos can be scanned and reproduced digitally on archival papers. Those precious memories can be saved and preserved."

Investment in equipment purchases and upgrades also allows the studio to better accommodate artists looking for fine quality giclée prints or oversize reproductions.

In addition to Jolly and staff photographers Linzie Dahlke and Mindy Matson, the Darkroom now employs Christopher Dahl as a professional framer.

To find out more about the expanded services offered at Clear Image, visit www.clearimagedarkroom.com or phone (360) 474-7773.