Jim Egan Photography.
Company: Jim Egan Photography
Location: Providence
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Owner: Jim Egan
Type of business: Photo agency
Year founded: 1977
Revenue: Approximately $275,000
Photographer Jim Egan stands in a pitch-dark room in his eighth-floor studio in the Doran Building, on Chestnut Street in the Jewelry District. Black plastic sheeting covers the windows, and a white, cardboard screen is spread behind him.
Turning a small cardboard dial taped to the window, Egan lets in a single beam of light. Instantly, an upside-down, 180-degree image of downtown Providence shimmers on the screen behind him.
“This is basically the first camera. It’s called camera obscura,” Egan declares. “This was used thousands of years ago by the Chinese, then by Aristotle and da Vinci. Oh – look at the guy walking!” Egan exclaims, pointing at the wavy, real-time image thrown from the natural lens onto his makeshift screen.
Egan, 51, who for 25 years has compiled an impressive portfolio taking photos for thousands of corporate clients, is something of a photography history buff. Soon he’ll have another relic to add to his collection: his darkroom. Tucked away in Egan’s sprawling, exposed-brick loft studio, the small darkroom is going the way of the camera obscura, practically a showpiece these days now that most of Egan’s work is done digitally.
While many commercial photographers have grudgingly moved toward the digital realm, Egan has dived headlong into the technology.
About five years ago, Egan took out a loan and sank nearly $30,000 into the equipment needed to make the transition to digital photography: a $14,000 digital scan-back, an $8,000 Fujix color printer and two digital cameras: a brand-new 35 mm. While five years ago Egan didn’t even own a computer – his bookkeeping was even done by hand – four Mac G4 computers now litter his breezy studio.
Today, Egan estimates that 75 percent of his work is done using digital – up from 50 percent just two years ago.
“Digital photography is not an evolution, it’s a revolution,” Egan said. “A lot of photographers will say ‘Why does this have to happen during my career?’ But this is the most exciting time for photography right now, and to be riding the crest of this wave is a very exciting thing for me. I relish it.”
Egan works mostly for businesses and corporations, either directly for corporate marketing departments or for their advertising or design agencies. His shots – predominantly people, products and buildings – are used in annual reports, glossy brochures and catalogs, magazine ads and on Web sites.
A few years ago, for example, his photo of a glowing Ladd Observatory on Hope Street, set against a crisp midnight-blue sky, adorned the cover of Brown University’s annual report. A panoramic shot of East Side homes spread out on the hillside overlooking downtown was used on a billboard in an episode of the NBC drama “Providence.” He’s done work for Speidel, Swarovski, Brown & Sharpe, RIPTA, Wenger (the Swiss knife maker), Chelo’s restaurants and Vermont Gold Syrup, to name just a few.
In the studio, digital shots are transmitted to Egan’s “digital-imaging center,” a small back room, where he retouches the large images splashed across his monitor. Using Photoshop software (he can’t wait to install the new 7.0 version), Egan tweaks hues, softens glare spots and brightens dark shadows.
“It’s better, faster, slicker – it makes my life easier,” Egan says excitedly as he adds a bit of sparkle to a gem-studded heart pendant to be used in a jewelry ad. In a shot of a Centerville Bank branch in Cranston, fake puffy cumulus clouds supplant a dull gray sky above the building. He quickly blots out a few dark specks on a french fry accompanying a chicken dinner for a Newport Creamery ad.
Instead of delivering a thick folder of glossy prints to clients, now the files are burned onto CDs, with images ready to be dropped directly into the client’s desktop-publishing software. If a client still wants color proofs, Egan simply prints them with a few mouse clicks using the Fujix machine.
Clients love the time and cost savings that come from digital, Egan said. And he doesn’t look at it as cheating – rather, it’s just another tool to produce great photos and give the client what they want.
“Most concepts that are integral to photography that I have taken from my years of still photography, I’ve taken those into the digital realm,” Egan said. “Years of working with lighting, composition, contrast, color – those aren’t thrown out.”
Egan added: “The bottom line is photographers are control freaks, and digital simply gives photographers more control.”
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