BUSINESS CLOSURE TURNS NEGATIVES INTO A POSITIVE.

Byline: Matt Cooper The Register-Guard

Aaron Ellis could never have predicted the response when he closed his family's portrait photography studio last summer after 80 years downtown.

In the first week, 1,000 people came by Kennell-Ellis Studio at 1280 Willamette St. The voice mail overflowed daily with messages; even now, almost a year later, customer calls fill the system each week.

Everyone wants the same thing: old negatives that the studio collected over the years.

"Every time I go down there, it's always full of messages of people wanting - in some cases, desperately seeking - a way to purchase the old negatives," said the 50-year-old Ellis, who lives in Portland. "They're afraid of losing them forever."

To meet demand, Ellis has established a Web site, www.kennell-ellis.com, so customers can search for and buy original negatives and remaining proofs that date to 1975.

Ellis, a third-generation owner, closed the studio because there was no one in the family to run it.

But he retained tens of thousands of files that hold negatives from photography sessions: weddings, high school proms, business photographs and family portraits.

As news of the studio's closure spread, Kennell-Ellis was inundated with requests by customers seeking pictures from the past.

Ellis' father, 76-year-old Sam Ellis, said he was "absolutely amazed" by the response.

"I didn't even realize a lot of people still knew we existed," he said. "We had appreciation cards from people for the fact they could get the negatives."

Many of the requests are for negatives that date to the 1920s, when the business started, Ellis said. But "over the years, we had to replace the older customer files with newer ones because of limited storage space."

Customers can take the color and black-and-white negatives to photo finishers for printing. A copyright release is included in each purchase so that photo finishers are comfortable reproducing prints from negatives covered by a professional photographer's copyright.

Ellis plans to sell negatives through the spring, after which demand will dictate whether he continues the service. Individual negatives cost $5 each, while files containing up to 50 negatives cost $30.

For some people, the price is of little consequence: "There's nostalgia," Ellis said. "People want to hang on to a bit of their past."

Customers might seek negatives of themselves as children, or photographs from their grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. The parents of a child who died years ago called as soon as they learned of the service.

Families that used the studio regularly over the years, in fact, could buy negatives that chronicle the growth of babies through high school and beyond.

Becki Hawk, 57, of Eugene, readily paid about $500 for every negative the studio could find of portraits taken of her three girls over the years. The girls were between 3 and 10 in the earlier pictures; now they're in their 20s.

"In the back of your mind, it isn't important until you think those memories are going to be actually thrown away," Hawk said. Now, "if I want to have another picture done at some time, I could do it."

OLD PHOTOS

Kennell-Ellis Studio in Eugene closed last year, but customers can still buy the negatives dating back to 1975. Visit the Web site, www.kennell-ellis.com, or call 343-8881.

CAPTION(S):

Sam Ellis hunts for portrait negatives at the old Kennell-Ellis photo studio in downtown Eugene. Former customers can buy pictures from the archive of wedding and portrait photography.