100 years of Professional Photography in Bangalore: Evolution, Advancement and Survival

Early to Mid 90s : Emerging of Photo studios , Kodak Box cameras, bulb flashes, Royal portraits, Brownie, 35mm, pinhole and inverted lense, black and white , emergence of color photography

Back in the days , we are talking about the mid or late 1900s till almost the end of it , Professional services in Bangalore was very nascent . I remember my dad mentioning a few from the erstwhile years of the Mysore dynastic period, we had the likes of GK Vale & Co. , EGK,  GG Welling, Bartons to name a few noteworthy. It was mainly the Royal families and the high flyers who fashioned portrait photography. Photographers would go over to their place will all their gadgets, setup and shoot.

Remember the cameras of those days like the Kodak box , Sandersons, Butcher’s , later Konica with point-shoot-cameras were ruling the equipment front.

The 90s till 2000: Emergence of formal photo studio chains , film processing, negatives, dark rooms

As the years moved on in the 80s-90s, we saw a few studios ( some called it Labs) setting up chains. These photo studios provided mainly film prints, passport, portrait shoot and some outdoors photography services like wedding photography and other events, with their dark rooms and painstaking film development process. This was the time Polaroid’s instant photo came into the space, the days of instant passport photos and instant prints caught the fancy of the impatient consumers who wanted quick turnaround of their snaps. Well the print quality was no match for anything we have these days…but it was big back in the days. The photo film processing and instant polaroids made an impact in the photography market for years to comes. Kodak was the king of films, lense cameras from  and this continued till the early 2000s, breeding many photo studio chains Come 90s-thru early 2000s , the digital era started photography technology took a paradigm shift with a complete turn of events that only a few could stay abreast, many crashed down on this ..2008 – Polaroid announced discontinuing the production of all instant film products, citing the rise of digital imaging technology and also launching many.

Technology completely changed the way photography was perceived, cameras became more affordable, blooming many photographers amateur, contemporary and professional Portfolio Photography businesses had to change the way they provided their services.  Since then technology of both cameras and photo print have only been exponentially growing.

If I look back , very few have stood this test of time and technological evolution , many well known photo studios crashed out as they could not keep up with the rapid pace the industry was shaping, save a few like GK Vale & Co, that has been able to keep ahead, constantly upgrade and enhance its services with the evolution. 

Old Bangalore will know GK Vale, as a modest studio opening its first shop in MG Road in 1910, since then they have been upgrading, enhancing and evolving with the industry, technology and the consumer demands, today GK Vale stands as a one-stop-shop for all photography needs , with over 30 studios and stores across Bangalore and Mysore and still expanding, more than 50 Professional Photographers in Bangalore many of them seasons professional with GK Vale for many decades, high end , high definition digital printing machinery that you will find no where else.

They have the largest collection of photo Personalized gifts, and has a very promising online business to cater globally.