Photography has been a passion of mine for nearly my whole life. From as young as I can remember, I’ve always had some sort of camera, whether it was a cheap 16mm toy film camera or a professional high end DLSR. Photography has always stuck with me. I’ve been shooting for over 15 years now on a “prosumer” level with images shown globally on social media or printed at trade shows. Went to school at Grand Rapids Community College where I took just about every photography class, including working with 35mm black & white film. Even had one of my roller coaster images used by the manufacturer, Rocky Mountain Construction for their trade show booth and promotional materials.

In the fall of 2015, I accepted a seasonal position that I knew I wanted to try and it stuck with me. After accepting a full-time position in 2016, I spent nearly 8 years at Corporate Color and ProLabExpress where I learned that not only was I highly creative and worked well with my hands, but also witness and help make products with other people’s photography. And I was good at it. I had an eye for detail and color and knew that I wouldn’t want make a low-quality product I wouldn’t want to buy myself.

Thus 2024 came and over half way through, I was dealt with the tough blow that the company I had spent several years at would be closing their doors. Customers were then left high and dry as several products that were exclusive to them were now gone and no company wanted to pick up the slack. So I decided to make it a mission of mine: bring back those missing products and fill in that part of the photography decor market that was left void. I bought a couple pieces of equipment from the old job, moved into my own shop space, and decided that the product I first learned to make way back in 2015 would be the first one to launch under this new company: Gallery Mounts.

In 2026, I became aware that many local photography shops were giving long turnaround times for their film developing and come to find out, they had been outsourcing developing to a shipping service. That was not acceptable to me. So I decided to bring back real C41 and black & white film processing as a drop-off service with a shorter, less than a week processing time.

Now, here I am, doing what I named this company after: Forging Ahead. A motto that I will continue to do and use my knowledge to keep moving forward.

Larry Treece III - Owner of Forge Ahead Imaging