It has been 20 years, almost to the day, since we officially set up shop. Looking back through the images we have produced over the years is something like looking back through two decades of family photos. Mostly, the images make us smile. Some are a little painful to remember. New ones are being added all the time that also have their unique stories, creating new memories.
We have to laugh when we think back about how this started. One of our first official jobs was for British Petroleum. The Art Director was in from the UK, and the photographer working with him called to ask if we could work on the project. We had not really gotten our business up and rolling yet and our studio was in our home. Mary was working on a Mac IIci, a relatively hot computer at the time. The work in Photoshop was going painfully slow, but the Art Director was fine. He hung out on our balcony, smoking cigarettes and enjoying the Texas fall weather. This experience inspired Mary to contact Kodak, with whom she had a personal relationship from her previous job, to see if she could work out a deal to get one of their powerful Unix computers running Premier imaging software. They asked her to train Premier users in Hong Kong, Brazil, and Puerto Rico as well as to work on a couple of other projects in 1995 in trade for one of their computers. That was a fantastic experience and the computer hardware was very instrumental in getting our company off the ground.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of the Neiman Marcus Art of Fashion. That series of images with Geof Kern was our first job with Neiman Marcus. We were fortunate, being a young company, to become involved with such a high profile project while it was still in its infancy. We certainly appreciate the fact that we are still adding Art of Fashion images to our site in it’s twentieth year.
After starting as a company offering only Creative Retouching, we have moved into video, capture and production services including equipment rental and artists on set. The journey has taken us around the world and given us the opportunity to work with some fantastic people. The work produced is as varied and wonderful as the places we’ve been and the people we have met.
As we built the new site, sometimes it felt a bit like looking at hair styles changing over the years. We did some editing, and decided to keep representations that go back to “Start”. Unlike hairstyles, many of these images are timeless.
The new site is giving us a better way to stay in touch with our friends from over the years, and also a place to meet new ones.
This home has been twenty years in the making, and we look forward to being part of your projects for twenty more.