PM Photo & Computer Services
Web Site Design and Business Products

About PM Photo

Paul M. Van Dort, owner of PM Photo with Trivia his wolf-hybrid

My name is Paul M. Van Dort. Beside me is Trivia, named after the Roman deity who stood guard over three crossroads. Trivia is a 90% wolf-hybrid who keeps me company in my home office.

I started the PM Photo in the Fall of 1990 after spending 26 years on the technical and sales side of the photographic industry. My computer background started around 1972 with classes in Fortran II and IV. Eight years later I began working on the PC.

The first PC had a processing speed of less than 3 MHz, no hard drive, no sound, no video card, no modem, no Windows, but it did have two 5-inch floppy drives, a mono-chrome green monitor and was connected to a 9 pin dot matrix printer. The operating system was DOS, and if you wanted a special application, you could always create it in a programming language called Basic. Any type of graphic, except for a straight line, was virtually non-existent.

In 1990 I started using a program called CorelDRAW 2.0 to create logos, and drawings. The Corel Corporation sponsored a World Wide contest and in their fifth year I received two "Honorable Mentions" for graphic designs. In 1998 the Corel Corporation flew my wife, Mitzi and me to Ottawa, Canada to receive one of the eight monthly awards for publishing in the Corel 8th International Competition. But, the most rewarding part of using Corel was the six years I spent teaching the program to others at Truckee Meadows Community College.

During the latter half of 1994 I plunged myself into the World Wide Web by first designing a personal web site and then designing sites for other businesses.

I have established a network of "Industry Professionals" so that whatever your project is, PM Photo & Computer Services can take you from "Concept to Final Product ". The philosophy I have built the business on is:

Offer a quality product, fast and reliable service
at reasonable prices.

The Changing World of Web Sites


Starting in 1996 my first site was a combination of business and some personal information. Initially the site was written using Windows Notepad, which gave me a fairly good foundation for understanding how the code was written.

After a while I went to Window's Front Page and in 2004 switched to Dreamweaver, which I still use today. However, knowing how to write and edit code in a simple text editor is a great advantage for both myself and my clients.

That first site was a sub-site hosted by Great Basin Internet Services in Reno, NV. The site: http://web1.greatbasin.net/~pmphoto/ still exists today but the space has been donated to my high school's 40th reunion (2004).

In 1999 I registered the domain name of PMPhoto.to since .com was already taken. The TO stands for the Kingdom of Tonga, an island in the South Pacific. The site was primarily for the business but in 2000 that started to change dramatically. I added some antiques for sale, and got very involved with the 1939 New York World's Fair.

By 2007 the site grew so large that I registered a new domain name: PMPhoto.us (this site) and moved all the business information and services here.

In 2010 with the World's Fair site (www.PMPhoto.to) still growing larger, I moved my hosting to the Cloud, and made a sub-site called www.antiques.pmphoto.to in order to house my personal sales items, and to trim down and focus the World's Fair site.

I don't know what the future holds in store, but I do know that my sites and the world wide web will keep changing and growing.