Elsewhere on this site you will be looking at old photos and ordering new prints "made to order" with the technologies of today. In this section you will find only "true vintage prints" made at the time of the shoot. Some of them will be 40 years old or more!

Vintage prints are usually more expensive simply because they are old. The best description we can point to is this from Hakelbury.co.uk : "The definition of vintage is not quite uniform, but in its strictest version, the photographer should have photographed and printed from that negative within one year. As we get further from the negative date, the window of "vintage" can often be expanded to cover five or even ten years. The price for a vintage photograph can be about four to six times as much as the price for a modern or later print."

There are hardly any b&w darkrooms around and today's technology doesn't even use the same kind of paper or chemicals to achieve a print. So, it is easy enough to see that to a collector vintage prints are highly prized because they "ain't makin' any more".

Many of these "true vintage" photos were taken by R Scott Hooper and printed in his darkroom right after they were shot. But many of them came from other sources that he collected over the years. Some are from the Las Vegas News Bureau (where he worked for a time) and others came from Las Vegas publications like the Vegas Visitor and Panorama tabloids, who used them for publicity. They have been carefully stored in our archives, kept in cool darkness away from the elements, which is why they are still in great shape after all these years. The prints will all have been printed by hand, usually within the same year they were taken, and often right after the actual shoot.

The image displayed here is an actual photo of the print available, and, there is only one like it. Taking pictures of pictures, especially glossy prints is not an easy task because of reflections. But, it is the only way to show you the entire print and cropping and condition. These vintage prints are mostly in very good condition, and if there are, any real imperfections we will point them out in the text.