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St. Charles business owners blend technology with portrait photography

This story was published in St. Charles County Post on Tuesday, June 25, 2002.

By Lacey Burnette

Of The Post-Dispatch

* Allen and Carolyn Fox are using lasers to create three-dimensional images of people at their business, Holographs on Main in St. Charles.

For many of us, holographs are something we first heard about on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Allen and Carolyn Fox hope that holographs are the next generation of portrait photography.

In March, they opened Holographs on Main in St. Charles. They use lasers to make three-dimensional images of people. The studio is one of three such operations in the country.

"Holography is a branch of science that has been developing for the last 40 or 50 years," Allen Fox said. "It was invented before it could be done. It couldn't be carried out until the laser was invented in the 1960s. McDonnell Douglas was pushing the state of the art right here in their plant in St. Charles."

Fox, who has a degree in optics from the University of Rochester, cut back to part-time status at Boeing Co. last fall to concentrate on the business. At Boeing - and the former McDonnell Douglas - he has worked in laser communications, infrared telescopes and night vision, among other areas.

He traces his interest in holography to a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago when he was 12 years old. "I saw my first holograph there, and I've been hooked on it ever since," he said. It was that visit that led him to Rochester, which at the time was one of two programs in the country on optics.

Holography is used in a variety of fields, Fox said, from medicine to communications. In industry it is often used to measure stress or to find defects in large objects. But until recently, it wasn't effective for use on people.

"The laser designed in the last five years was designed for the holography of people," Fox said.

Having the laser available was one thing, making the process cost-effective was another. One of the three retail studios in the country, in San Francisco, was designed by its owner. Fox said setting up a studio from scratch nearly makes the operation cost-prohibitive, and the images extremely expensive to purchase.

But recently General Optics Laboratory, a company in Lithuania, automated the process.

"They took everything you need to make holography in one package and automated it to a high degree," Fox said. "It's more reliable and it's quicker. The whole package cost less than the cost of a laser in the United States. I opened this studio for one-fourth the cost of what I could have done it for two years ago."

The Foxes had been looking for a business opportunity - without much success - and he had been closely following developments in holography.

"When I saw this package, I realized that the cost on the images could be in the hundreds of dollars rather than the thousands of dollars," Fox said. Despite the advancements, Fox still spent more than $100,000 setting up his studio.

For some, several hundred dollars for a single image may seem somewhat steep, but the images are unique and offer interesting opportunities. The shop's customers have included brides and grooms, high school seniors, people in the armed services, business people – including Cardinals broadcaster and restaurateur Mike Shannon - and one image is a three-generation shot of a man, his son and his father. Each image appears independently, depending on the viewer's perspective.

A 12-inch by 16-inch holograph with one subject costs $495. Additional subjects are $125 each. Sizes range from eight inches by 12 inches to 16 inches by 24 inches. The shop also sells frames and lights that attach to the frames.

For the subject, getting the image done is not much different from visiting a photo studio. Fox said the process takes about 30 minutes. "We spend a lot of time practicing the pose and the smile. We try to get it in one shot," he said.

Getting the image in one shot - which takes about 1/30 billionth of a second, keeps Fox's expenses down. The image appears - when tilted correctly in the light - on a glass plate that Fox imports from Russia. The image is held in a silver halide emulsion that is about 1/40,000th of an inch thick on the plate. The process is similar to that used to take black and white photos 150 years ago.

The image itself is a product of two lasers meeting on the plate. One laser reflects off the subject while another reflects off a blank surface onto the plate. That reflection provides the reference beam for the image while the laser hitting the subject results in the contrast on the plate. The silver particles in the emulsion redirect the light, causing the image.

The original plate is the master. Fox then makes a copy from the master for the customer. Fox tells customers that the images should last at least 100 to 150 years, although they could last much longer. Photos taken 150 years ago that have been subjected to heat and humidity have survived nearly intact. Today, with air-conditioning, the life of the images could be much longer.

It is not uncommon for people passing the shop on Main Street to give it a long look. The images, on first take, can be spooky.

"Maybe it's similar to 150 years ago when people first saw images of other people or themselves in photographs," Fox said. "I tell people it takes some getting used to. Some of the people who are the most uncomfortable with it are the same people coming in and checking it out."

Fox, who lives in St. Charles, has seen a good traffic pattern on Main Street this summer. It's one of the reasons he opened his shop there. "Everyone in the St. Louis area knows where downtown St. Charles is," he said. "There are really very few places in the whole St. Louis area where you can say a particular street and people know how to get there."

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Holographs on Main

* Owners: Allen and Carolyn Fox

* Address: 300 North Main Street, St. Charles

* Hours: 1 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

* Telephone: 636-940-2191.

* Fax: 636-723-4448.

BUSINESS\

Reporter Lacey Burnette:

E-mail: lburnette@post-dispatch.com

Phone: 636-946-3903

Published in the St. Charles County Post section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Tuesday, June 25, 2002.