My company is experimenting with digital photography to help show our pproduct (textiles) to customers. How do I find someone in the New York City area to help us understand how to use this technology?

-- Dennis Wright (dwright@pkaufmann.com), July 27, 2000

Answers

Dennis,

I would think that in NYC you would have no problem finding training resources! Try a search on New Horizons Learning Center or just New Horizons. How are you trying to show your product? If you are doing it via the web then you must understand that what looks right on your machine may look totally different on a customer's machine. Unfortunately we all look at everything differently than how it was designed because of monitor calibration differences. The solution to this is far off.

Fred

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), July 27, 2000.

Dennis:
While there are some clear differences in the technology there is no difference in the rules of lighting and composition that make the difference between poor and presentable product shots. In fact - I would be concerned that a digital workshop would spend too much time on the technology rather than the techniques you need to learn to present your subject.
My suggestion is to look into any good photographic workshop and not worry about the technology at this point. While the technology can present many interesting aspects - the basics of the art are more necessary to success at this point in time.
I'm a fan of the Maine Photographic Workshops - a not-too- bad distance from The City. There are, however, good workshops in New York I'm sure. Try this link for a start:

New York Photo Workshops

For the Maine workshops try:

Maine Photographic Workshops

You will find some workshops gears specifically toward digital if that is more to your liking - but...

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), July 28, 2000.

I'm not sure whether you're looking for someone/some agency to help teach your staff about digital or whether you're looking for help getting the images recorded and then online for your customers?

Chances are, The Yellow Pages and talking to other business people are probably still the best way to find such help. You can probably do a search and try to find graphic design or web design companies in your area, but referrals from trusted associates are always better.

If you know anyone connected with a local college, chances are you can find a professor or grad students capable of setting you up for a very fair price. There are a lot of graphics art professionals in the NYC area. Shop around.

As mentioned by other posters, the biggest problem you'll face is that other's PCs probably aren't calibrated to the same settings as yours. You can make a pretty good attempt at getting around that by calibrating your monitor to a known standard and then generating a series of grey boxes graduated from black to white and letting viewers check their monitor's brightness, contrast, etc. settings by adjusting them so they can see differences between each of your differently shaded boxes. About 10 steps from black to white seems to be sufficient to get most everyone on the same wavelength. If necessary, you can do the same thing with red, green and blue boxes so they can get their colors adjusted to settings at least grossly similar to your own. Bear in mind that if you use a PC and they use Mac's, ne'er the twain shall meet... There will always be some differences there.

For true color accuracy, you'll need to establish a calibrated standard. You can purchase a device called a colorimeter that will give you a set of digital values that correspond to the color of the object you're sampling. Unfortunately, the reflected color of most things varies greatly as a function of lighting. Try searching for "colorimetry" and see what you find. Colorimeters can be used to sample objects, fabrics, etc, as well as the color displayed on a monitor to help get everything calibrated together.

Texture and the like should be pretty easy to discern from an image transmitted over the web or via email.

Good Luck!

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@surferz.net), July 29, 2000.