In Focus Vol. 4 No. 7

Fine Balance Imaging Finds Ways to Help Artists Succeed

Photographers Joe Menth and Nancy McFarland provide a range of design, printing and finishing services, plus help with marketing and promotion.

Washington’s Whidbey Island is a mecca for artists, photographers, and vacationers. Its peaceful marine environment in the Puget Sound is surrounded the majestic beauty of the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges. Located 25 miles north of Seattle, Whidbey Island is promoted as “The shortest distance to far away.”

When Nancy McFarland and her son Joe Menth moved to the island, they intended to start a small art gallery. Nancy and Joe were photographers and artists at heart, but had worked mostly in technology-related careers. Nancy had been a computer programmer and network administrator; Joe did marketing work for high-tech and bio-tech companies in the 1990s. These corporate jobs weren’t related to anything either of them was truly passionate about.

At the art gallery, they started making small art prints for a few of their artist friends. In 2004, they opened Fine Balance Imaging in direct response to what local artists said they needed.

The fine-art printing business has quickly expanded to also include an array of capture, design, finishing, and marketing-support services for artists, photographers, small businesses, and consumers.

Fine Balance Imaging offers: high-end film and flatbed scanning; photography services; graphic design and layout for greeting cards, posters, brochures, and business cards; panorama stitching; color correction, retouching, or restoration of photos; and help with printing of promotional materials. Their primary service is wide-format printing of fine art, photographs, posters, banners, and displays.

For their wide-format printing work, the studio uses Epson 4800, 7600, and 9800 printers with ColorByte Software’s ImagePrint RIP. Even when reprinting jobs that were initially produced four years ago, Fine Balance can still get perfect color matching to old proofs.

“While ImagePrint does have its quirks,” says Menth. “Its consistency in color from media to media is absolutely flawless. We’ve been able to proof the same image on multiple media and get almost exact color matches.”

For artists and photographers who want easy-to-sell prints for local festivals, Fine Balance Imaging provides shrink-wrapped or poly-bagged mounted prints. Finishing options include UV-coating, hand deckling, or custom trimming.

As their services have expanded, so has their base of satisfied clients. “Doing work that we truly love motivates us to uphold incredibly high standards.” says Menth.

Services beyond Printing

Menth notes that, “We provide resources beyond printing. If we can help our clients figure out how to market their work or find other resources that can help them be more successful, that helps us all.” Fine Balance Imaging offers consulting on pricing, graphic design, and marketing and conducts classes on Photoshop, digital workflow, and photography. Menth is currently developing a class on social networking, because so many artists have asked about the best ways to use Facebook, Twitter, and blogging to promote their art and exhibitions.

Each year, Fine Balance Imaging sponsors The Gratitude Giclée Show, featuring work that they have printed for their clients. Some artists in the show are internationally known; others are just beginning their careers in art.

“We rent the venue, do all the marketing and publicity, cater the event, and hire entertainment for the artists’ reception.” says McFarland. “One-hundred percent of the sales from the exhibition go directly to the artists. It is called the Gratitude Show because it is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to our clients for allowing us to do for a living something we are truly passionate about.”

Community Involvement

Menth is president of the board of the Whidbey Island Arts Council and Design Chair of the Choochokam Arts Organization. To support these groups, Fine Balance undertakes projects such as printing the promotional materials, posters, banners, and booth graphics for Choochokam: Langley's Festival of the Arts, the largest annual arts festival on the south end of the island. Additionally, Menth helps promote Whidbey Island Art Council's programs, including the annual Open Studio Tour weekend in which tourists can buy tickets that enable them to visit the studios of 80 to 110 participating artists on Whidbey Island. Tour proceeds support college scholarships for fine-art majors.

As a result of their extensive networking and commitment to excellence, Fine Balance Imaging has grown mostly through word-of-mouth referrals. They have done work for artists as far away as Alaska, New York, and California.

Recently, Menth has seen an increase in the number of artists coming to Fine Balance Imaging from Seattle. He attributes this to a seminar on alternative print processes he presented to the local chapter of the Surface Design Association, a group or artists who specialize in different types of multi-layered, mixed-media fabric arts. Some group members had originally hired Fine Balance Imaging to produce bookmarks and posters, then were intrigued by some of the prints on silk and cotton they saw in the Fine Balance Imaging studio.

“So they asked us to create a class for them to show them the possibilities of digital printing,” says Menth. He printed out samples on every type of media the studio uses and prepared a PowerPoint presentation on the basics of Photoshop, digital-imaging, resolution and scanning. After learning how to get their images into the computer, seminar attendees saw how their designs could be printed on silk, cotton, mulberry paper, acrylic skins, aluminum and copper. One woman who attended the seminar took a stack of Fine Balance Imaging brochures, media samples, and postcards back with her to Seattle.

Media Options

Menth is a big believer in helping artists see the possibilities of using different types of materials. Fine Balance Imaging produces 4 x 9-in. media-sample books, showing the types of images that work best on that type of media: “We hand those out like hotcakes.”

Currently, most of the studio’s clients use the Epson Ultrasmooth and Somerset Velvet papers for art reproduction. Many artists also like to print and sell their work as greeting cards, using Crane Museo Fine Art Greeting Cards. Menth notes that artists can sell the cards for $6.50 to $8.00 apiece: “One local gallery paid an entire month’s rent just by selling framable fine-art greeting cards.”

“What has taken us by surprise recently is how quickly LexJet’s Water Resistant Satin Cloth is becoming popular,” says Menth. “More and more clients are using it to create frame-free, ready-to-hang art.” Fine Balance Imaging sells the prints with a simple hanging system made from dowels and satin cord.

Fine Balance Imaging is also seeing increased interest in LexJet’s Sunset Select Matte Canvas and environmentally friendly papers such as Hahnemuhle Bamboo and Sugar Cane. “Once artists and photographers see their work printed on it, they go for it,” says McFarland. It also gives the artists something new they can promote at art festivals. She is surprised that many photographers want to print images on the bamboo paper: “I wouldn’t have expected that because it’s so much warmer in tone than traditional photographic papers."

McFarland says that although artists love having choices, some get so overwhelmed that they can’t make a decision. Unless she senses that an artist wants to experiment, she usually suggests one or two options. She says, “We’ve gotten pretty good at being able to recommend the right media based on their art.”

All of this attention to customer service and support is paying off. Even as the economy has tanked, Menth says the studio’s business has grown to the point that they recently had to move to a bigger space. He attributes the growth not so much to having the right technology, but rather to building good relationships: “Our clients don’t care what equipment is used to create their prints. They just care that we spend time with them personally to make sure that they’re happy when they leave so they will come back to us again and again.”