Mastering the Nuts & Bolts

Mike Stone, Production Manager, Hilton Photography

A professional photographer for nearly 30 years, Mike Stone has been production manager at Hilton Photography (www.hiltonphoto.com) in Worcester, Massachusetts, for 17 of those years.  The leading senior photography company in Eastern Massachusetts, Hilton Photography has two portrait studios, as well as three traveling "virtual studios," which serve over 40 schools and offer children and family portraiture.

Mike has a unique business perspective, having seen things go from film to high-tech in a pretty short time.

As he explains, “We were 100 percent film capture up to early 2002, so all of our negatives were scanned, digitally retouched, and sent to an outside lab for output. 

In January 2002, we began to test digital capture, and by March we had converted all studio portraits to digital.  By August, our high school proms and dances and all of our underclass photography were converted to digital. 

Our original plan was to capture underclass on roll film then scan the images.  We had even purchased a $12,000 scanner for that purpose.  But by the time the school season started, we had converted to digital capture.  The scanner was never plugged into a wall.  We sold it some years later, still unused, for a few hundred dollars.  Since 2002, we have produced all of our work in-house, on a Noritsu MP1600 and an Epson 9800 wide-format printer.”

Digital photography has transformed the way Mike and Hilton Photography do business.  “The other studios are no longer our competitors.  Our competition is everyday individuals with digital cameras,” he says.  “To be a successful professional photographer today, you have to create looks and products that people can’t do themselves.”  Mike is quick to add that his studio uses ExpressDigital’s Darkroom Professional and Assembly Editions precisely for that reason.
 
“The digital platforms we use are what make us stand out, and what make people come to us for their family, child and student portraits.  We use Darkroom to create greeting cards, calendars, multiple image layouts for high school and family markets, high school senior wallets with names imprinted in various fonts and styles, etc.

From creative borders to printing images on canvas, Mike has positioned Hilton Photography as a high-end portrait studio.  The studio serves some 4,000 portrait customers every year, takes about 40,000 underclass portraits and group photos, and documents about 100 high school dances and proms annually.

“Portrait photography is much more than taking a picture of a smiling face,” he says.  “It’s a total sensory experience for the customer. We make our subjects feel special from that first call, all the way through the process, to the time when they actually see the photos, the final products.  Otherwise, an 8X10 is just an 8X10. Customers come to us for the quality of their experience, as well as the quality and innovative look of their images.”

Ever since he was a high school student discovering photography, Mike has been intrigued by the science and mechanical nuts-and-bolts of photography.  “What I was excited by was the math and the chemistry involved,” he recalls.  “I liked being able to figure out how to manipulate images in the darkroom, how to determine depth of focus and control lighting to create a mood.  I’m still excited by learning about digital file manipulation, color management and workflow.”

Mike’s first job in a photography studio was filing invoices.  At 17, he drove 45 minutes to get there and was paid $2 an hour, but it was worth it to him.  “I had my foot in the door and I was willing to work hard,” he recalls.  In less than two years, he was behind the camera, taking portraits of high school seniors.  When he left the studio, 11 years later, he was in a managerial position.  While technologies have evolved since Mike first walked into a darkroom, his passion and ability to master the mechanics haven’t changed.  Knowing how to use technology to create work that differentiates his studio from the competition is his greatest business forte.

Mike suggests, “Provide something no one else can.  Establish yourself as the clear leader and as the person, the business, people must go to for what they want.  Help them see that they can’t do what you do and no one else does it as well as you, either.  Be willing to put in the long hours to get ahead, especially when you’re first starting out.  Last, become an absolute master of technical proficiency in digital photography because whether you output your own work or outsource it, the benefit of working with technically superior images is tremendous.”