Eloise Ogden/MDN Bill and Marie Leonard, owners of Rainbow Photo Labs in Minot, are making plans for a transition – to retire after more than 40 years in the business. Their business is one of only two privately owned photo labs in North Dakota and also one of two specialty camera shops in the state.

Rainbow Photo Labs of Minot has the notoriety of being one of only two privately owned photo labs left in North Dakota. It’s also one of only two specialty camera shops in the state.

Bill and Marie Leonard, owners, have been in the business for 42 years. They’re now making plans for the next chapter in their lives- to retire.

Their business at 215 11th Ave. SW is for sale and they hope to have a buyer soon. They would like to help someone continue the business they’ve enjoyed for so many years.

Their photo lab business has made many transitions over the past four decades.

“We started in October of ’77,” said Bill Leonard. “We were one of the first one-day labs in North Dakota at the time. After we started, then one-hour photo came along about 1981 and we got into that also. We had four different locations in Dakota Square over a 28-year period.”

The store got its original start in the present Midtown Plaza at 212 S. Broadway.

“At that time it was the Baldwin Martz building, single story, and as we were opening in there they were putting a second story on the building. With all the cement, saws and stuff you couldn’t see from the front of the store to the back of the store,” Leonard recalled.

“The city certainly needed this kind of service and we jumped out of the ground quickly. We were successful in a hurry,” he added.

For the one-day photo processing, he said, people would bring in their film by 10 a.m. and they would have photos ready for pick up by 4 o’clock the same day.

When one-hour equipment came along, he said that’s what they also did.

“This was before digital and everybody was shooting films over the weekend and would bring them in Monday morning,” he said. “That was the business model.”

The business was located at its original site for 10 years and then the building at the existing site was constructed in 1987. They have been located there ever since. In addition, they had a one-hour lab next to Marketplace Foods and also had various locations in Dakota Square.

A photography studio also has been part of the business for many years.

“We’ve had the studio since we started here in ’87,” Leonard said. “We started with some digital equipment in 1995 and were one of the first in the country to do anything digital imaging. We were really on the leading edge there.”

He said he switched to digital in 2003 for his studio work.

“We thought it (digital) was wonderful at the time. We were scared because we didn’t know what to make of it, but after a month of doing both film and digital images of the same assignment, we realized digital is going to be the way we go. Of course, that’s when digital cameras came on the forefront and film started receding.”

“We tried to bend with whatever was the latest and greatest so that we could stay ahead of things and still be competitive and relevant – to be able to print from phones, do scanning, restoration of old photographs, make big prints and that kind of thing,” Leonard said. “We do some very unique things and our drawing area is very large.”

He said they like to meet the customers face to face and give their customers’ projects the personal touch.

“We like to talk to them and get things right for customers,” he said. He said their clientele is nervous about sending away items that they feel are valuable and cannot be replaced.

For those who take photos with their smartphones, he said, they encourage them to get their photos printed.

“That’s how they are going to survive through the generations and not just in a cloud (storage service for photos) somewhere or on CDs somewhere in a drawer,” Leonard said.

“We do a lot of scanning of old negatives or old photographs. We restore old photographs,” he said.

They also make prints from 35mm slides.

“There’s really no useful way to view them if you don’t have images. If you don’t have them printed, there’s no way to view them really and we’re still able to do that,” he said.

“We’ve evolved as digital things come along to be able to serve customers and get them the things that they want,” he added. “We still like what we do. We’re still busy as heck.”

He said they are hoping to to sell the business to someone who will take over the operation. He said they would also teach the new owner the business if needed.

“We do wish that somebody would decide that they would like to do this and succeed us,” he added.

As for family, the Leonards have five children and eight grandchildren.

Incidentally, the other privately owned photo lab in North Dakota is Ramsey Photo Lab in Devils Lake, and the other camera shop in the state is the Camera Clinic in Mandan.