It is often easy to forget the effect the computer boom has had upon our lives. Over the past 10 years new technologies have gradually crept into all manner of activities. One of the areas where this change has been felt most profoundly is photography.
The introduction of digital cameras and associated digital imaging technologies has had a huge impact on the photographic world, from the average consumer right up to the professionals.
Traditionally, a whole background industry supported the photographer, from suppliers to print processors. However, the arrival of digital imaging has prompted some to speculate that the new DIY approach may make much of this industry a thing of the past. However, as one company in Malahide, Co Dublin is proving, the move to digital is not all bad news and indeed can present some exciting business opportunities.
Sheldon Photographic is situated between a vets and a laundry in Malahide and bears the slogan ‘Images In – Images Out’ on the premises. After nearly 20 years in the photographic and graphics industry, the owner, Sheldon Long, felt that the time was right to offer a new concept in photography, a combination of a computer and conventional photographic store. Opened last year in what had been previously a 1-Hour Photo Lab, Sheldon Photographic offers a wide range of products and services encompassing both the digital and traditional photographic spectrum.
Sheldon Photographic’s digital services run from the very basic up to high-end professional solutions. Anyone with a digital camera can get prints run out there. The outlet is also a retailer and, according to Long, the photo services provide a good shop window for Sheldon’s range of printers and several people who have used such services have also come away with a printer under their arm.
The restoration of old photographs is another element of the business that has benefited from the advent of digital imaging. As time goes by, many old photographs tend to get worn and damaged. For those seeking to get new copies, it’s now a matter of popping the old photo in a scanner to get a digital copy of the image. "We can then manipulate the image using Photoshop to restore it, removing things like scratches and tears," says Long. After that, it’s simply a matter of printing off copies of the image.
The company currently stocks six different Epson photo printers and can print direct from digital camera cards on such models as the Epson 925, which is designed to replace your existing printer with one that can also print photographs to laboratory standards. A print copy and restoration service is also offered and long life prints are produced on the Epson 2100. This model is rapidly replacing the Epson 1290 as the store’s best selling printer to the professional photographers market.
Using Epson’s 7600 printers, Sheldon Photographic also offers a printing service to a new breed of artists, which could best be described as digital artists. With a growing demand for Giclee-type printing (where an archival image is generated by a method of spraying miniature jets of ink onto a canvas), the company has found a new market for limited edition prints on a variety of paper and canvas media. It also has facilities to copy large works of art using the Imacon Digital Backed cameras, which, with true optical 16-bit files and sizes up to 384MB, can ensure maximum quality.
Typical customers are artists and photographers who are looking for new ways to promote their work. In a number of cases, after initially printing images for clients, Sheldon has then recommended, sold and installed systems to artists so that they can reproduce their own work in-house. One such digital artist is Colette Farrelly whose work, that sells for hundreds of euro, is on view in a framing shop across the road and also in some designer shops in Dublin. Sheldon Photographic has recently captured a series of images for a forthcoming Irish Fine Art auction to be held at Drums Auctioneers in the town and these images were produced in the catalogue and a thumbnail 32 inch-long poster showing over 60 of the images.
Perhaps Sheldon’s most unusual customer to date is the vet next door, Billy McCartney, who regularly requests a copy of an x-ray which is scanned for him on an Epson 1680 Pro and printed on transparency film or photographic paper. On occasion, he has even asked Sheldon Long to digitally record an operation. McCartney specialises in limb injury and finds digital imaging a good way to record the progress of recovery of an animal post operation. It may be a long way from printing up people’s holiday snaps but for Sheldon Photographic it’s all in a day’s work in the new digital printing era.

Further Information: www.siliconrepublic.com