"Preserving the Past" celebrated its move out of Taylor Whitney’s home office to East Avenue.

The business specializes in the preservation and digitization of photo collections.

"I get boxes of photos out of closets and organize them into photo albums and address the deterioration process which is inherent in photographs because of the chemical makeup," said Taylor Whitney, owner.

Taylor Whitney also does film transfers and preservation.

"A lot of these photographic collections also have home movies in them. So I take the home movies and get them into the digital realm," said Whitney.

Whitney started her film preservation career in Hollywood, but Rochester drew her in after she spent a year at the George Eastman House as part of a masters program.

"When I came here I was ready to get out of LA and it was just such a beautiful community and people are friendly. A lot of opportunity for film preservation here," said Whitney.

Whitney still gets advice from her colleagues at the Eastman House.

She hopes to expand her business in the near future by hiring graphic designers and archivists.

"There's a lot of resources here like RIT. What's interesting is I need people that know film so they can prep film for a telecine transfer, but also people that know digital. It's a balance of knowledge base that I need to have," said Whitney.

She is not afraid to share some of that knowledge for free.

"Some people think that they get their collections digitized their things are preserved. Digitization is not preservation so always save your original elements," said Whitney.

It all comes down to what Taylor Whitney calls a rewarding career.

"My clients come to tears looking at my work because they're so touched to see these photos that have been lying in boxes for 40 years," said Whitney.

Preserving the Past