Photography by the Browns, Centerville, Iowa

Our portrait studio has a long standing history and tradition in Centerville, Iowa that dates back to the late 1920's. Our negative files date back to 1927 and we have almost every negative that has been created since then in our archives. There are people who remember the studio when it was called Bratz Studio and was located two doors south of our current location and up a long flight of stairs. Since the time the studio went into operation, over 50,000 clients have been photographed. There are very few studios in Iowa with such a long history.

The studio has experienced and embraced every change in photographic techniques and styles over the years. The early days of black and white film and paper and even glass negatives were very exciting and produced some of the most beautiful portraits. Those days were followed by adding color to black and white images. For these color images, the studio used the services of a "color artist" who used transparent colored oils to transform a black and white image into beautiful color. The use of transparent oils can still be found today but the technique has almost become a lost art.

Then the advent of "direct color" photography in the late 1950's came along and portrait photography would change again. In the early days of color photography, there were portrait photographers who thought color was a "passing fad" and would not last. Oh how wrong they were.

Several years ago our studio moved into what is turning out to be the most exciting time in portrait photography, the digital age! We no longer use film… instead, we use 12 mega pixel digital cameras and gigabyte compact flash memory cards. The images we create are archived on CDs and printed by the color lab on Kodak's ENDURA portrait paper on state of the art digital printers.

Thank you for stopping by and learning a little bit about us.

Michael L. Browns

Owner