Sorry for not being overly proactive on ID7 this past week or so; it’s been hectic. The lab finally said goodbye to the machine. While it was brilliant at what it did (I have two hundred 12″x16″ prints to prove it!), it had become a financial noose around the lab’s neck.

In an effort to rebrand and reorganize, we had a fruitful meeting last night that revealed some hard truths about their business processes to date. In trying to compete in an ever-changing world—where people’s attitudes toward photography and prints have shifted from paper archiving to a sort of ‘digital archiving’—they’ve lost out and failed to evolve. The lab currently feels a little lackluster; it needs a lift, a fresh lick of paint, and some revived energy in the space.

We’ve wrestled with several ideas and now have a scale plan for the new layout. It looks great, and now we just have to turn this vision into reality. That might feel like a distant goal as I sit here, but honestly, we have a solid team lined up to pull this off. With some muscle and a bit of backbreaking work, we can get the place buzzing again in a month or so.

We’ve already produced some test shots and played around with our proposed studio workflow, which, all in all, seems to be working nicely. After resolving a few technical hitches with the lighting and applying that fresh coat of white paint, we should be ready to head upstairs.

Here is the floor plan of the proposed i-printroom and its updated downstairs layout. Also, here is a link to the test shots Paul and I produced to get a flavor for the lighting. They aren’t fully finished; it was more about gauging the timing of a shoot and seeing the quality of output we could expect to play with.

It was really good fun.

— csj

• taken|21/04/2008 15:09
• camera|Canon EOS 5D
• lens|17 – 40mm L
• focal length|17mm
• aperture|f/16
• shutter speed|1/60 sec
• shooting mode|Manual
• exposure bias|0
• metering mode|pattern
• iso|100
• flash fired|Yes Broncolor Impact
• image quality|RAW
• raw converter|Photoshop CS2
• cropped|3×2