Viewpoint: Picture Perfect
When you’re photographing a detailed, hand-built home fashion set for Macy’s, every pixel counts. That’s why Viewpoint Studios — a 13-year-old commercial photography company and digital media center located in Greensboro, North Carolina — chose Apple when they recently decided to transform their traditional film-based workflow to one that’s fully digital.
Viewpoint, which employs 115 people and maintains some 147,000 square feet of architecturally-based room sets and prop galleries, is ahead of the industry curve in going all digital, says director of technology Stewart Fortune. “I think the room set photography industry as we know it in home fashions has been very slow to engage digital because of the depth of field, swings and tilts that we need for perspectives on cameras. Only in the last 2 years has the computer chip advanced enough with technology to really, really hold the kind of data and information we need. Also, we now have lens selections and software to manage the capture, which allows us to compete in what I consider large-scale format photography, like environments and interiors.”
Making the Move to Digital
Viewpoint was careful to ensure that it didn’t lose any quality in effecting the transition. “We tested very extensively with a variety of digital capture devices,” explains Fortune. “We found that with the really high-end devices like PhaseOne digital cameras, the perspective correction was finally developed to a point that we could hold focus in a room scene the way we’d been able to do with film all along.”
Viewpoint’s digital media center supports all of its digital captures with an integrated workflow offering complete file conversion, color management with contract digital proofing and an image repository that maintains various types of file formats for image publishing applications.
This workflow is driven by Macs. “Macs were the only viable choice for us,” Fortune says “They made the transition simple — from software to networking. By introducing Xserve and Xserve RAIDs into our systems, we were able to quickly and easily handle the high volume of files produced on the studio floor, as well as covering our archiving needs.”
“Macs were the only viable choice for us. They made the transition simple — from software to networking.”
Technology Supports Creativity
The most important aspect of the setup is the freedom it gives their workflow. “We’ve approached this a little differently than most people,” explains Fortune. “Most studios tend to limit the number of digital cameras and move around from one place to another with photographers. Our approach was, let’s put a camera and a computer on every set.”
This allows for a much more efficient process, says Fortune. “Now we’re able to start propping and design right away and let every person who’s had some responsibility through the process come in and look at images on the screen.”
Macs are so easy to use, says Fortune, that it’s no problem for any employee to operate the equipment. “I have non-computer skilled people — who you’d never expect to be able to use the equipment — walking up to sets and checking their work in the correct dimension, as if it’s in the final delivered product,” he says. “This is prior to the photographer lighting the set, so it’s improved the quality of our work.”
Not How it Used to Be
Prior to going digital, things ran a bit differently. No one could be sure what the final product would look like until the entire set was complete and lit. Even then, the photographer and client would be speculating about the effect of adjustments. Sometimes, says vice president of marketing Gary Hair, “in the testing stage we’d be working from a poor image showing us contrast that didn’t necessarily match the actual film range.”
Fortune agrees: “These machines show final image quality, so there’s no guessing about what’s happening based on a Polaroid, the way we have for the last 50 years. We’re able to pull the trigger now and see an image on screen in just a matter of seconds. The designer and photographer are standing on set and can make design changes immediately, where in the past we had to wait 40 minutes for film to come through to be able to make final decisions.”
