| It
was late in the afternoon on a hot September day. The studio was
settling into a the usual relaxed pace that comes after our 2:30
Fedex deadline. Then Robert Glenn Ketchum called, frantically stating
that Photo District News (PDN) wanted to feature him in their November
issue. They needed photos. And they needed them fast.
Master Printer Terrance Reimer took scrupulous notes, as Ketchum
told him the details of the project, and mentioned his deadline—less
than 24 hours away.
He
knew that we made small scans of his images for placement only (FPO)
in his book, Wood-Tikchik—but most of the images
had never been printed, and were not scanned to a high enough resolution
to make a high-quality reproduction, such as what PDN needed.
Ketchum
brainstormed, trying to figure out how to send us eight images,
have us scan them the same day, interpret them, and overnight CMYK
files to PDN. Our fedex delivery comes around 11 AM each day. Pickup
is at 2:30 PM. There was no way we could have met the deadline…except
for one important fact.
“When
we made the scans for his book, Ketchum only needed small FPO scans,
and that is what he paid for.” Reimer said. “We had
the feeling that he’d need bigger scans in the future, and
we decided to scan them to 100MB at no extra charge. This little
courtesy— which Ketchum didn’t even know about until
the PDN Deadline--saved the day.”
Our
foresight allowed us to easily meet Ketchum’s deadline. Reimer
used the Wood-Tikchik book as a guide to help interpret
the color, saturation and density of each image. It took him two
hours to prepare the images, convert them to CMYK and burn them
to CD. He sent them along with Epson 9600 guide prints, so PDN would
know the colors the images were supposed to contain.
“Ketchum
was completely elated with joy,” Reimer said. “He was
relieved. He made his deadline.”
The
end result?
One
of Ketchum’s images was featured on the cover of the November
issue, and several other images were featured on the inside pages.
CMYK offers a much narrower palette than RGB, which is the colorspace
we use for print making. But the images in PDN had accurate density,
very close colors, and served as excellent representations of Ketchum’s
original photographs.
At
West Coast Imaging, we are constantly trying to help our customers
by going the extra mile—usually in ways you will never see.
And while we normally do not scan images larger than what our customers
request, by knowing our clients and understanding their careers,
we are able to take extra steps to help ensure their success. This
is true, whether you’re a well established photographer like
Robert Glenn Ketchum, or an amateur photographer who is just starting
out in the field.
“Our
extra initiative saved the day,” Reimer said. “And we
proved, once again, that we can deliver the goods under deadline
pressure.” |
The
November 2003 PDN cover featured one of Ketchum's images
from his book, Wood-Tikchik.
 Order
Ketchum's book online
View
a portfolio of his images
|
