The photographic community in Seattle learned this week that we are losing an old friend.
Ivey Seright--the lab that processed thousands of rolls of film for me over the years--is closing its doors, I assume a business casualty of the “Digital Age.” There was a time when Ivey was a bit of a second home for me, and also for some of my friends. It was the place we’d stop at night to drop-off film after a day of hiking and photographic adventures in the Cascade or Olympic Mountains, or out at the Washington Coast. Our film would be processed overnight and ready first thing the next morning, when my friends and I would show up, holding our breath, anxious to see whether our exposures looked good, whether our film conveyed the visual impact that we’d seen and felt in real life.
Ivey Seright also handled the film for advertising, fashion and architectural shooters. The lab had a "pro" area where we'd hunch over light tables and edit our work. It was a cool place to hang-out, in that one tribe could see what another was working on.
Back in the days before digital cameras came into the worlds of serious image-makers, the choice of who we photographers trusted to process our film was not a small matter. I remember once--and only once--I took film from one of my landscape-shooting trips to a “pro” lab other than Ivey for processing. The finished transparencies came back to me damaged. After that, only Ivey Seright handled my film.
In recent years when many photographers I know switched from film to digital, I was a film holdout, primarily because it is imagery that matters to me, not the camera that was used. Film worked for me. Why change?
A year ago I too caved-in to “progress” and bought cameras that I load with memory cards, rather than rolls of Velvia.
This morning a photographer friend called me. He has a client who needs to have some prints made. Now that Ivey is closing, my friend wondered who might print for his client?
My guess is that we photographers with cool Epson photo printers on our desks will find we spend less time out in the world making images, and more time filling the role of the vanishing photo lab.
