----- Original Message -----
From: "Shel Belinkoff"
Subject: Re: Are your photos too good?
Hi Bill,
As said in an earlier message, a copied photo is pretty obvious. But I was
talking about film, scanned images on CD, and those images on memory
cards.
Therin lies the problem for us.
It's pretty easy too scan a picture, twonk it around in Photoshop (even the
junior imaging programs will do well enough) for a while until it looks
good, and plonk it onto a CD or memory card.
If you've done a scan from a neg or slide, you can provide the original as
proof of ownership, but this is often more difficult to prove with digital
only work.
I mention corporate mentality - and maybe that was not the best
descriptive
choice of words - but the big operations are the ones with the deep
pockets
and the ones, as has been mentioned here, that are most open to lawsuits.
In addition, at least here, the Wal-Marts and the Ritz and the Wolf camera
places have, for the most part, no real personal relationship with their
customers, and, from what I've been able to ascertain, no amateur who is
serious about his/her work, and certainly no professionals that I know,
would use these shops, in part because the staff changes frequently and
the
quality and service is very poor. And, of course, there's no such thing
as
custom processing and printing, or making of large prints, or getting
custom printing or scanning services. So the only people these places do
work for are the home snapshooter and , imo, the low-end amateurs.
Sadly for my market area, the last of the custom labs closed shop last fall,
and I now know of only one pro photographer in this area still running his
own lab/darkroom for his own work, and it looks like he is shutting down
that end of his operation in the near future.
I presume the film market is still healthy where you are?
I really don't think the digital shooter needs a high end custom photo lab
like the old days.
I can take a file from my camera, do what needs to be done to it at home,
and submit a finished file to the lab, all ready to go.
It's plug and play printing.
As long as the lab can provide fairly consistent colour balancing from day
to day, it doesn't even matter if the operators know how to print.
I try to have a good relationship with my customer base, and it pays off for
me. I've taught my better customers how to get better pictures by profiling
their equipment to match mine and by making intelligent image settings.
OTOH, I seem to be the only tech in the place that actually has a client
base.
William Robb
The places I use know their customers and, perhaps, their customers don't
try copying the work of others. I'll ask Mo about this today or tomorrow,
when I next see her. I'd like to know what, if any, policy her lab has.
