As some of you know, my life lately has been full of surprises, but not all of them have been nice. Yesterday, I had a very nice surprise I’d like to share with you. As this is a photography blog, it’s photography related.
Pittsburgh has many things, but one of them is NOT a robust photography store. The city has a lively arts scene, it has an Art Institute with a good photography program, it has Pittsburgh Filmmakers (that also has a good photography program) but its single photography store isn’t the best. When I lived here and went to graduate school, I remember three stores, all pretty good, but obviously not now. My guess is that the general decline in the economic scene here in Pittsburgh has collapsed the desire for photographic equipment. I don’t know for sure, however.
Until yesterday, Peg and I thought that if we wanted to ‘browse’ in a photo store, we needed to drive to NYC, where there’s B&H and Adorama, among others. There’s a Calumet in Philly, a little ways closer than NYC.
We like browsing in photography stores. When we lived in SF, we would frequent Keeble and Suchat, a GREAT local photography store (heck, it’s located in Palo Alto, so they don’t exactly have to scrounge for potential buyers of high-end gear, if you get my drift). We happily pay the ‘extra’ for good customer service. We bought lots of equipment in K&S.
Thursday night, I discovered Dodd Camera in Cleveland on the internet. The web site looked okay, so we drove there yesterday. Cleveland is about 2:15 away, so it’s easily a day trip. Well, lo and behold, not only was Dodd’s ‘ok,’ it was also GREAT. Lots of equipment, very clean, crowded on a Saturday afternoon, very knowledgeable salespeople (I would listen to each one discussing with customers and they knew whereof they spoke), and a decent stock of film and darkroom equipment (decent for 2009, that is, which is all you can ask).
I had a particularly nice conversation with Eric Wethington, who also impressed me very much. We bought some stuff, and had a nice chat about the store. Highly Recommended if you find yourself in Cleveland.
Peg and I will be back.
P.S. They had Leica gear in the sales case. I saw an M7 and an M8. Very nice.
It’s good to hear that there are photo shops that still thrives and have find a way to survive in this Internet era. Doing both Internet sales and local sales from a store seems to be a good idea. I guess the Internet part of the business partly may finance the sales operation in the store. Just thinking out loud…