Our History
A brief history of Elias Photography:
In 1976, a young and enterprising Rick Elias began a photography business that would grow to be one of the most unique and imaginative photography studios in the world. It is unique, not only because of the originality of the photography, but for Rick’s ability to bring it to life and survive the many struggles through which it has been.One of the early locations of the business was in the William Penn Hotel, on Philadelphia Street in Whittier, CA. It was a great location on the mezzanine floor, with the front desk of the hotel acting as secretary to the public, and the rent was great.
In the late 1970’s, if you will turn to your Whittier history books, the Penn Hotel suffered a devastating fire caused by a faulty heating pad in an elderly man’s apartment in the hotel. Rick grabbed his Rolodex, negatives, and his favorite chair out of the store after the fire, and set off to look for a new location.
The new location, at 6738 Greenleaf Avenue, is the same location as today. This was not to be the studio’s last move, however. Rick made improvements on the building, moved into an apartment in the back, rented out the available offices and commercial space next door, and was on his way to a very successful career. It was at this address that many of our customers became familiar with us.
In July of 1987, another young artist, Carol Engebretson (then Daniels) walked in the front door, and began work as a receptionist, clerk and retoucher. This was an event that seemed routine at the time, but for both Rick and Carol, it would turn out to be quite significant.
In October of 1987, turning to our history books again, a devastating earthquake hit, the epicenter only a few miles away, in Whittier Narrows. Much of Uptown Whittier was in ruins. The building in which the studio resided was standing, but needed a complete retrofit or to be torn down. Either option was extremely costly. It was to late to buy the earthquake insurance that he had been shopping for six months before the quake and was unable to find a carrier.
Just to make it clear: Rick lost his home, his commercial income property, and his business location in that quake. Homeless, without a good portion of his income, and nowhere to conduct business, an urgent fight began to recover from this devastation.
Rick, Carol, and the rest of the staff became movers. The studio relocated a few doors south to the basement of the old United California Bank building on the corner of Greenleaf and Philadelphia. The building at 6734-38 Greenleaf was torn down shortly after the earthquake. For two years, working out of that location, the studio photographed record numbers of weddings, while Rick worked on obtaining a disaster loan.
By the end of two years time, a disaster loan had been obtained, and Rick had purchased a home close to Uptown Whittier. Rick moved the business to work out of his home while the commercial building was being planned and built. Carol conducted the retouching at her home while she finished her college education.
Working from his home allowed Rick to be more experimental in his photography. He learned much about what makes people do what they do, and how to photograph more natural and realistic images.
In 1995, a few years after the completion of the new commercial building, Rick moved the business back to the store on Greenleaf Avenue. It was an instant success. Familiar faces returned, and new ones appeared. Many remembered the studio from it’s former reputation, and many had never seen us before.
1996 marks the year that things got so busy, that Carol came back, full time, to work in the studio. In 2002, she became a partner in the business. 2009 will be the 33rd year of business for Rick, and marks the 21st year that Carol has been with the studio. Elias Photography has survived extreme hardship over the years, and if you want to know more, you are welcome to come in and ask Rick about the whole story.
~ Today ~
In 2005, we undertook a project that would change our studio forever. Rick set out to shoot thousands of photographs of dancers for our “I Want to Be a Ballerina, Part II” project. In order to facilitate this project, we purchased our first digital equipment. We still had our doubts and were also still shooting film alongside with digital. In the end, we found that digital would be our future and we switched over to digital immediately. Digital has turned out to be more rewarding for both us and our customers, allowing us to do things that were never possible with film.
We hope to continue providing quality, artistic photography to the public for many years to come. Our history indicates that we can weather even the worst storm… but we hope that it will be smooth sailing from now on.