Tim Tadder is an incredibly talented commercial photographer located in California. Recently, Heidi Volpe of aPhotoEditor interviewed him about some promos he had printed at Marathon. See what he had to say about this stunning piece.
Who printed it?
This was printed by my friends at Marathon Press in Nebraska. Marathon caters to the wedding and portrait market mostly, but after meeting their CEO at a trade show I was impressed with their color reproduction. These images are very, very difficult to reproduce so I knew that Marathon was the place to do it. After a few bad experiences with some other vendors, I was super excited to have a new partner to help get our images noticed by industry creative.
Who designed it?
Cheryln Read a talented designer in San Francisco. She is designing all of our promos and managing the process of getting one out each month. She pulls images from our site and comes up with creative solutions. She comes from an agency background so it’s helpful to have her make promos that people want to keep. I am not a big fan of creating waste, so I wanted to partner with someone that felt the same way. We have to send out mailers to remain relevant, and we hope the ones we do send out do not immediately go into the trash.
Who edited the images?
We edited the images in house. I did have an amazing retoucher handle one image as the skin was particularly difficult for me to manage, but the rest were done by me.
How many did you make?
2500
How many times a year do you send out promos?
8 to 10 times a year.
I understand you had some printing issues. Tell us about that.
I used another popular vendor for mailers and I noticed the color becoming more and more incorrect with each mailer. The reproduction is critical and we would always buy proofs to ensure great color. Sometimes we would go three rounds of proofs (expensive) and then when we would receive our mailers the color would be off dramatically. Their response was that they do proofs on a digital press and the finals on an offset press and that a color shift was normal. They reviewed our concerns and came back to us saying that the shift was “Acceptable”.
My clients would never be happy with me telling them that the color shift in their images were “acceptable.” That’s when we set out to find a better printer and a better partner to help us. We don’t like when things are “acceptable” we strive for AMAZING and EXCEPTIONAL. Shocked that someone would treat a finished product that way!
