We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Benjamin & Timothy Yi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Benjamin & Timothy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Our dad Alex started this business, and without him, we wouldn’t be here today. We asked him once how he survived as a film lab all these years, and his response was unassuming and humble. He said he was lucky, that it was all God’s blessing. Back when he was running the show as a one-man operation, he had just enough business each day to get by. Oftentimes it would be a really slow morning, and then in the afternoon a few customers would come drop off like ten rolls and save the day. In the early days, our dad depended on just a handful of loyal customers to really support his business and keep the lab afloat. Some of these early customers are still legacy customers to this day. When our dad was finally making enough to hire more people, God blessed him with wonderful hard-working individuals. When the digital era erupted in the mid 2000s, a lot of film labs in the Valley closed down, but their customers ended up coming to our dad, and so he was able to survive. In the 2010s, when film photography was really on its last legs and our dad was seriously considering selling the business, film somehow found a second wind and people started shooting film again. This wave was slow to build, but it has definitely grown to be bigger than anyone expected it to.

Our dad is a man of faith. He goes to church on Sunday. He prays every day. He truly believes that everything he has was given to him by God. But we also want to point out that our dad works extremely hard and always strives to improve himself. We believe that success requires a strong work ethic, and our dad definitely has that. For over 30 years, our dad worked Monday through Saturday, 6 days a week, 9 hours a day, hardly taking any days off (even when he was sick). Sometimes when the machines broke down, he would stay hours after work studying the operator manuals to fix them in order to complete all the jobs on time. For a time, our dad was one of the last film labs to develop all black & white prints by hand in a dark room. He spent decades constantly honing his craft to deliver the best work to his clients. If there’s one thing that was key to our dad’s success I would say it has to be his work ethic. But after working with him for the last five years now, we noticed some things that go beyond our own understanding.

Not a day goes by at work where everything goes smoothly, according to plan. For some divine reason or other, something definitely goes awry. Machine stops working, internet goes down, scanner gives some error message, printer gets jammed. But I’ve noticed that these things only happen when our dad is out of the office. We can be having a really smooth morning, when all of a sudden the paper jams and the printer needs attention. Why? No apparent reason other than that our dad stepped out for lunch. The days that our dad is not in the shop? Those are the worst. Constantly putting out fires all day.

If you ask me what has led to our dad’s success over the years, it’s two things. It’s hard work and his unshakable faith in God’s ability to provide.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As a co-owner of 35M Pro Photo Lab, Ben manages the creative direction of our brand. Ben has a background in product experience design, and he has worked internationally with various start-ups and major brands to help communicate and facilitate brand identity and services.

Ben’s brother Timmy manages the lab and the team. He has a background in English literature and was on his way to getting an engineering degree, when he realized he could use his skills in real world applications by improving the family business operations.

Our passions both inside and outside of work differ but we do share a common interest in photography and fixing problems with our hands. Together we own more than a dozen cameras, from the Nikon F to the Pentax 67, and we spend our time off shooting a multitude of subjects, from portraits to natural landscapes – LA has a lot of awe-inspiring subjects in these categories!

35m Pro is a family-owned film lab that has been serving the Sherman Oaks community for over 30 years. For many years, our dad did everything himself. Over the years, film photography has definitely gone through its ups and downs, and so has the business. In order to survive and stay afloat, our dad expanded his services to include printing and framing, as well as studio portraits and studio rental. It hasn’t always been easy, but this business has managed to stay alive over the years. Much of this is due to having loyal customers who supported us through hard times. This is why we treat our customers like family. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.

Our dad was an immigrant — born in Seoul and came to the United States in the 80’s to pursue a better life for my brother Timothy and me. But unlike a lot of other immigrants, he chose a profession that spoke to one of his great passions: photography.

After working in The Korea Times shooting film photos for ads in the newspaper, our dad opened 35M Pro where he developed film, scanned film negatives, and printed photos to support our family year after year. Even with the disruption of digital cameras, our dad weathered through the tough times believing that “film is forever,” as he likes to say.

Our dad loved coming to a workplace with a creative clientele that shared his passion, so he was able to instill in us not only a strong work ethic, but also to pursue your passions, basically saying that if you love your job, you don’t ever end up doing a day of “work.” I don’t know if it is a coincidence that I followed my father in this entrepreneurial creative path, but I admired how he managed to find a way to make money doing what he loved.

For the past few years, we have completely revamped the 35M Pro Photo Lab space and machine operations to not only anticipate the issues that kept popping up when our father stepped away, but also to create a better workflow and environment for our team. We have set goals to solve the challenge of keeping his legacy alive and to deliver consistent and high quality work in a fast-paced digital world. We want our lab to be a hub for all things photo-related (developing, scanning, printing, and framing photography), a place where photographers can be inspired, and an indispensable part of the larger creative community. You can come in to grab a roll of film, be inspired by other photographers on our walls, and may end up talking to one of our very knowledgeable staff about anything, from film grain to the old camera sitting in your grandfather’s garage.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is often seen as just a numbers game. But for specialized businesses like ours, what’s more important is the quality of our followers, as opposed to the quantity. It’s also important to know the values of your community, and to interact accordingly with their interests.

One of our biggest social media engagements happened during the #BLM protests of Summer 2020. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, we noticed a lot of the film we were developing for our clients were photographs they had captured of local LA protests and activism. We wanted to contribute meaningfully to this historical moment, so we offered free film developing for these types of photos. Using a selection of these eyewitness photos, we then collaborated with local artists to put together a #BLM photobook, shot by our community of guerrilla photographers on the ground during this cultural movement.

This collection of photo essays was titled TO LIVE AND CRY IN LA (creative directed by Ramona Mia), which we produced and sold to our customers in 2020, donating all the profits to different Black Lives Matter foundations.

We got many positive impressions on social media from this project, and while social media engagement was not our intention, I believe that our community saw our genuine intentions of trying to help make a difference. To this day, people in our local community remember TO LIVE AND CRY IN LA, and that is a steadfast goodwill that we are proud to retain.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

We can only speak for ourselves, but we think a lot of children of Asian immigrants would say that we were raised rather critically – Asian parents tend to be more reserved with compliments, while more eager to provide criticism. Seeing that our team are not our children, we had to unlearn some inclinations to be more critical, and focus instead on positive reinforcement.

It’s important that we build our team’s confidence. As retailers, we are client-facing all the time, and happy employees beget happy customers. So we make a concerted effort to show our appreciation to our staff, such as acknowledging small wins to empower them and lending them a sense of ownership over their duties. We sometimes hang out after work and shoot photography together to build camaraderie and lift morale.

Our other biggest piece of advice, beyond positive reinforcement, is to make a concerted effort to invest in your team by educating them and providing them resources to grow in their expertise. A company is only as strong as its people, so it is important to grow the abilities of your team first before pursuing your business goals. It is a very interpersonal, step-by-step process that can’t be skipped!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.35mpro.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/35mpro/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/35mpro/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/35mPro
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@35mpro
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/35m-pro-photo-lab-sherman-oaks

Image Credits
Nick Coleman, Vince Patrick, Alejandra Bautista, Benjamin Yi