PUBLICATION CENTER

Looking for profitable new venues and applications for your print services? Brian Hampton brings exotic photographic décor from around the world to a local restaurant in super-vivid wide-format.

Over the past year or so the ability for print shops to provide their customers with high-end décor work has increased dramatically. With the advent of high-quality solvent printers, such as Epson’s GS6000 and LexJet media optimized for this type of printing, the sky is the limit for profitable décor work.

For Naples, Fla.-based photographer, software entrepreneur and globe trotter Brian Hampton, the images he captures on worldwide safaris of all sorts on land and in the water lends itself perfectly to corporate and retail décor. It’s one thing to capture a great image, but another thing to translate that image into a big print that draws attention and creates buzz at the location.

Hampton recently printed 15 images of his most recent dive in the Bahamas for local restaurant Giovanni’s. Fourteen of them were printed at 30 in. x 40 in., and one at 40 in. x 60 in. Hampton has established a permanent display for his photography at Giovanni’s, providing a continuous change of theme and scenery based on his travels to Africa, South America, the American West, and above and below the water.

“When I change the theme at Giovanni’s, I re-use the same frame I had made by a custom frame company. When I print the images, I give them 24 hours to dry, mount them to Gator Board with my laminator, and then cut them to size to fit inside the frames, which is why I standardized the photos at Giovanni’s,” explains Hampton. “I use Genuine Fractals to rez-up the image in order to maintain the 360 ppi the Epson printer likes. It’s important to me to see the detail. I get some pretty big files because of that, but I don’t mind because that’s part of the fun. With my African shots, for instance, I want to see the whiskers on the animals.”

To ensure the detail he’s after Hampton uses the Image Print RIP, which is specifically designed to optimize photographic and fine-art output, to drive his 60 in.-wide Epson Stylus Pro 11880. For the print medium, Hampton says he gets the best results with LexJet’s Sunset Photo eSatin Paper.

“The ImagePrint RIP takes a lot of the work out of it, which is why I love the program so much. Each color is adjusted so that it produces a more natural image to the eye; it’s pretty incredible stuff. People don’t realize just how much that RIP program does for them,” says Hampton. “I also give the paper a lot of credit because it accepts the ink in such a way that it brings out the richness of the colors. The one thing about underwater photography is that those images, when exposed with the right amount of light, produce natural, magnificent colors that are highly saturated. The eSatin paper produces what I originally see underwater when I’m shooting.”

The clarity and resulting impact of Hampton’s large-format prints have been instrumental in his marketing efforts, effectively spreading the word and getting his work placed in restaurants like Giovanni’s, offices, custom homes, and art galleries.

The popularity of his work is due mostly to the fact, as Hampton explains it, that he captures scenes that few people get to see in person. Still, the proof is often in the print, particularly when reproduced in wide-format sizes.

“I shoot in the RGB 98 color space, profile my monitors in RGB 98, optimize my prints at 360 ppi, and print from TIFF files, which ImagePrint likes best. In theory, and as a practical matter, what you see on the monitor is what you get in the print,” explains Hampton. “One of the challenges of underwater photography, beyond the fact that you can’t concentrate completely on the camera, is that you have light that travels through water so you have very little ability to light your subjects beyond three feet. Another challenge is what happens as you go deeper; you lose certain colors and below 100 feet, depending on visibility, everything is a green except what you light. It’s very challenging to bring those colors back; you can’t just adjust your color temperature. Every color is affected by the depth, visibility, and natural lighting,” explains Hampton. “It becomes a lot of work in Photoshop and Lightroom where you adjust the colors to bring them back to the correct color. Once you get it on your monitor correctly, you save that file and the RIP program will print it by the numbers.”

If you want to follow Hampton’s travels, and his award-winning photographic record of those travels, visit his website at brianhamptonphotography.com