LIHU‘E — Ron Kosen’s spacious photo lab and studio on ‘Umi Street is a work in progress. The photographer-businessman-photo-lab-specialist is moving forward in step with the digital age of photography, while maintaining the traditional levels of customer service and quality
LIHU‘E — Ron Kosen’s spacious photo lab and studio on ‘Umi Street is a work in progress.
The photographer-businessman-photo-lab-specialist is moving forward in step with the digital age of photography, while maintaining the traditional levels of customer service and quality necessary for business success.
Kosen launched his Kaua‘i photography operation at Artisans Landing, developer Chris Hemmeter’s dream shopping area on the edge of the lagoons at Kauai Lagoons.
With the demise of Hemmeter’s dream in the early 1990s, he moved uptown, to Kuhio Highway, where he stayed through Hurricane ‘Iniki and beyond for about 11 years. In September, 2002, the business was relocated to its present site when he jumped at the opportunity to own his own building.
He says his commercial portrait studio and photo lab shop may be the last of its kind on Kaua‘i, with most photographers now working out of their homes.
Photo studios were once found in most Kaua‘i communities, from Hanalei to Waimea, with photographers using large-view cameras to capture weddings, graduations, baby lu‘aus and other prominent events.
Today, with the rising popularity of digital cameras and the arrival of big-box retailers with their own in-store camera labs, the old photo studio tradition is history, he says.
“The Kaua‘i market is small. You can’t survive focusing on one niche,” he says of the photography business. “You have to be flexible and diversify.”
Kosen said industry statistics are claiming that Wal-Mart now owns about 70 percent of the photo-finishing market in the United States.
He says the photo-processing world took a turn away from film in 2002, a time when be began receiving digital photos placed on CDs for processing.
To survive in a market serviced by Wal-Mart takes an extra level of service and creativity in using both photo-processing equipment and the Internet as a marketing, distribution and communications tool, he said.
“We try to be the people who can do everything,” he says of the services he offers.
Kosen is doing just that, adding e-mail reception of digital camera files, turning to a digital photo processing machine that’s able to accept all sizes of digital photo cards, and by using his hard-earned talent as a film photographer as a foundation for a success in processing and taking digital photos.
On the processing side, he is emphasizing the value of printing out digital photos on photographic paper rather than relying on a home-based, ink-jet printer. He says digital photo prints will last longer when printed on Kodak- type papers, and they are cost-effective compared to using pricey ink -jet cartridges.
A film scanner that looks like a mini-version of R2D2 of “Star Wars” fame as it sits next to Kosen’s photo processor, Lehua Cristobal, is a key component of his digital-processing setup.
Exposed strips of film are run through the scanner and digitized, and each image is custom-color-corrected by the processor running the machine, unlike large photo- processor systems where images are scanned automatically using pre-fixed settings that might not always produce the optimum results.
Kosen says part of his continuing success is solving image problems of customers. “If you bring it to us, you can get it,” he says of turning a problem image into what a customer seeks.
He says digital-camera images often need more “tweaking” than film images, and that his custom processing also addresses that problem.
Customers can also edit their digital photos at home using Adobe Systems’ Photoshop or other software, burn them to a compact disk, or e-mail them in, and have them processed and printed on Kodak film.
A plus for digital processing comes when large blowups are needed, Kosen says, pointing out the oversized photos of hula dancers taken by Kaua‘i photographer Blaine Michioka that hang in the arrival area of Lihu‘e Airport. He processed the photos in his lab and found they were sharper than blowups done using film, which can add noticeable grain to a very large image.
A down side to the digital world is a flood of e-mails to answer, some with inquiries about wedding photography and other photography work, some with requests for help with digital files. He is planning to add FTP service to his Web site at www.photo-spectrum.com to allow easy transfer of large digital files.
