In the meantime, George tried selling black and white photographs, which proved to be a success at the shows. Seeing a success with the black and white photographs, color photographs and slides were included in the inventory. In 2003, George decided to change the name to Melvin Photos and by this time had started consulting with Kathy about the operation of the business. Kathy designed a database to track the inventory, increased marketing and set up a bookkeeping system for George. In 2004, George and Kathy were married and Kathy continued on as a consultant in the business and George started teaching her about the various aspects of the products they carried.

George, a long-time railroad employee and photographer started writing books in 1975 and to date has authored eleven books, three of which have been co-authored with Kathy and published by Melvin Photos. He has also written numerous magazine articles.

For the past 20 years they have traveled around the country taking photographs and doing research on railroads, wildlife and scenery to include in their inventory as well as buying collections to add to their resources. Today, George and Kathy partner in all aspects of the business.  They have transitioned their photo sales primarily to Ebay. The sale of prints at train shows has been phased out.  George and Kathy have plans to introduce a new digital book sometime in the future called Bucket List on a Budget.  This book will describe how to travel on a budget.  Since 2004 George and Kathy have traveled to 48 of the 50 states, Hawaii and Alaska are still on the Bucket List. 

George has started working more on his modeling, hoping to write articles and do presentations on how he scratch builds some of his buildings and showing the progress on his layout, which is still in the planning stages at this time.