When Clyde Collier decided to open a photo shop in Rome, he had no idea that he would become one of the leading film processors for Kodak in all of Georgia.

Collier opened his first shop at the corner of Avenue A and Fifth Avenue back in 1968. He moved to his present location, 600 Broad St. in 1974 and has seen, and survived almost unimaginable changes in his industry.

“I just wanted to open a small studio and sell small Polaroid and Kodak cameras,” Collier said. He had heard some folks in town who were upset with the only other full-service camera shop in town at the time and decided to give the business a try himself.

“As soon as we opened, we had businesses like Kraft (now Temple Inland), General Electric and others come in and want to open accounts with us,” said Collier. “Business just boomed and it wasn’t long before they (the other camera shop) went out of business.”

“We were Kodak’s largest film processor in north Georgia for quite a number of years,” Collier said. During his heyday, Collier had 17 people on his staff, many of them running routes to pick up film from customers for processing.

Today, Collier has four assistants, including Dan Scott, who has been with the shop since 1975; Barbara Collier has served as her husband’s bookkeeper, Joyce Forester has been with the company for about five years and Stan Brown, who is semi-retired, has been with Collier for about 25 years.

“Then came digital and it just flattened out,” Collier said. “We survived by doing commercial, legal, even aerial photography.”

To this date, whenever there is a serious wreck in the Rome area, it’s not unusual for Collier or longtime assistant Dan Scott to be called to the scene of a serious wreck or crime. Law enforcement as well as insurance companies often use the photographs to document the scene of all sorts of incidents.

In addition to the commercial work, Collier has done well by taking old home movies and converting them to a digital format. He is also able to print up to 24-inch-by-36-inch enlargements in-house.

“We’re practically out of the camera business,” Collier lamented. He and Scott agreed a couple of years ago that it just wasn’t cost effective to stock cameras and have people come in and learn to shoot the new digital gear, then go elsewhere to make their purchase.

“It’s changed considerably,” Collier said.

That might be the understatement of the week. But through the changes, Collier is still serving the photographic needs of Romans.