Silver Mountain Images began as an idea to offer the best possible prints to those who are serious about the quality of their work. Most photography labs offer cheap prints printed in volume. For most of the images people want prints from, that works just fine, but for those special images, the “best” ones, making a good print from those labs is frustrating. In early 2021, I decided that it was time to begin printing my own work again.

I say again because it was how I got into photography in the first place, back in 1968, when I received a little darkroom kit for my birthday. I fell in love with the process. It was only after a few months of taking photos with a simple box camera, developing the film, and making prints in my bedroom at night, that I got a 35mm camera.

In 1984 I began photographing weddings and events part-time while working at Main Drug Store in Visalia, selling cameras. Shortly later I began doing black and white darkroom work for other professional photographers and advertising agencies to supplement my income. I called that business Roy Dressel’s Black and White Services and I operated it in my home darkroom (a little 10×10 room in what used to be our garage) for over ten years. But by about 2001 film was on its way out, and the darkroom business was taking up time that I needed to use in my photography, so I closed the darkroom business and began sending all my work out to professional labs.

In 2021 I decided that it was time to get back into printing some of my own work. I missed the process of taking an image from the camera to the wall. Now I am ready to get back into the printing business again with Silver Mountain Images.

The name Silver Mountain Images came from a song by an old rock group Ritchie Blackmores Rainbow. The song is called Man On The Silver Mountain. I was in Death Valley one day many years ago, walking on the sand dunes near Stove Pipe Wells when the name came to me. Silver Mountain Images just sounded good to my ears. Originally I thought I would use the name for a photographic art business, but that never took off and when I decided to start the printing business I thought the Silver Mountain Images name worked well for it.