Trade Names: There's no sign of Leary's Photo Labs finishing nearly 60 years after it started - the business has just signed a 35-year-lease, finds Rose Doyle

The world of the photography lab used to be a black and white one. Then a little colour crept in, then a little more. Now it's all colour. It used be too that chemicals did the job of developing; now most images appear via the magic of digital.

Tim Leary has lived and worked through all of the changes. He's retired now and doesn't take pictures anymore. "I worked with them for too long, since I was a young child, working in the Raglan Lane business with my father. Sometimes I miss it, but not often."

Leary's Photo Labs is still there, no longer Leary-owned but continuing to process and finish film, as well as taking photographs. Tim Leary bowed out in 1999, handing over to the man who'd worked with him in the business for 28 years, John Reinhardt. "It's in good hands," Tim Leary assures - and remembers his own time.

Tim Leary's father, Albert, worked in photography for the United Drug Company in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1946, he started his own photographic laboratory and photo finishing business in Parnell Square. Four years later he moved things to 31 Raglan Lane. "It was just a coach- house," Tim remembers, "but those were the best of times. It was all hand-printing then, one print at a time, and all black and white. We used 48 gallon tanks of chemicals. We did the same for a long time after we moved to Ranelagh, only going into colour about 1975-'76. The earlier cameras were mostly old 120 and 127 Brownies, and the prints mostly small ones. My father used to stamp numbers on the back of his work and I still come across small black and white prints from time to time with his stamp on them.They're in houses everywhere."

Albert Leary worked hard and ran his small business in the thoroughgoing, way of his times. "He had messenger boys going round on bikes to collect film from the chemists," Tim says, "collecting, collecting - they were always collecting. My father would work all night; he had to. It was a very tiny business then and he had to keep it going. Customers would give their film into the chemist and expect it back, developed, before 10 a.m. next morning. So my father would have it collected, then develop and have it delivered back early next day. There were a lot of small photographic finishers in Dublin 30 to 40 years ago."

He recalls some of them - Crann Helm of Mount Street Crescent, Ryans of Parkgate Street, Lyall Smith in Rathgar and, biggest of all, Kodak in Rathmines in whose black and white laboratory he himself trained. "They were old fashioned businesses," he says, "all gone now. As is Hodges Lab, a bigger company which was very competitive and put a lot of smaller people out of business. Gone themselves now."

Tim Leary joined his father in the business in 1957 and nine years later, in 1968, the company moved to 15 Chelmsford Road in Ranelagh. "We needed more facilities and more space and in Ranelagh we could have a shop, lab and studio," Tim points out. "We started doing photographic work when we moved to Ranelagh too, as well as running the shop and lab. My family, wife and children, were always involved. My father died in 1981, my mother and I ran things together until 1986 when she died. In 1999 I decided it was time to get out myself. It was a nice business to be in, but I don't miss it. I especially like seeing pictures taken by my father."

Tony Reinhardt, a working part of the Leary business since 1971, took over when Tim Leary retired. He runs things these days with John Behan, from a premises of more modest aspect than they'd like. "This is an A1 listed building," John explains, "so we've had to take down all signs and advertising."

The pair have been friends for 33 years, since they first went to school together in St Mary's in Haddington Road and later to Westland Row CBS. They've been working together for the past six years. "People call us Laurel and Hardy," John says.

Tony Reinhardt joined the company as a lab assistant which meant, he says, that he was a "general dogsbody". He grew up in Sandymount but knew the older Ranelagh fairly well. "It was like a village in the 1970s," he says, "not as hectic as it is now. You can't move today without tripping over parking, disc and clearway signs, none of which has anything to do with traffic management. Every other shop too is a take-away food place."

And these are just the enviromental changes. The business side of things has changed dramatically too in the last 32 years. And not all for the best either.

When celebrated pop artist David Hockney condemned digital manipulation for heralding the death of photography as an art form, he was echoed by Tony Reinhardt. "There's a lot of technology around photography today but very little knowledge. The colleges are producing photographers to beat the band who go out, take pictures and then try to fix them on their computers when they go home - all instead of taking a good picture in the first place."

Still, he's convinced analogue photography "will always have a niche market. Not like in the 1970s though, when business was flying and I would collect film from 50 or 60 chemists. We developed, enlarged - the whole gamut. At the height of the season we'd have 600 black and white films to be done per day and about 80 colour. Now true black and white is rare. We get a fair amount of old prints to make into new negatives or prints and the quality of the originals is second to none. You'd never get it today."

Leary's greatest ever amount of business came from the Pope's 1979 visit; their lowest ever time was during the foot and mouth scare. Tony Reinhardt says that, these days, Holy Communion and Christmas business has "fallen off. It's all videos and digital now though people still like to get special photos developed. Summertime is still our busiest time. Business is very quiet from mid-January to mid-March, until St Patrick's Day."

John Behan agrees with all of this, adding that "summer is always hectic, go, go go. It's holiday shots and professionals too coming in with their work. Then there are portraits and weddings and graduations to be done. And of course we do digital too." With another 35-year lease signed in the last few years, Leary's Photo Labs will be developing with the business for a few years yet to come.