PARIS PHOTO LAB/IMAGING IS WHERE PHOTOGRAPHERS FOR such elite MAGAZINES

as ELLE AND VOGUE TURN TO HAVE THEIR PICTURES DEVELOPED AND RETOUCHED

Digital photography may be the way of the future, but for some of the most discerning photographers, nothing beats film and the old-fashioned developing and printing process to achieve the highest quality images.

At Paris Photo Lab/Imaging, photographers for such elite publications as Vanity Fair often spend days working with a printer, looking at one shot after the next to find the perfect contrast and color shades for just one picture in an upcoming issue.

“In our type of niche, photographers are very particular,” said Arnaud Gregori, co-owner of Paris Photo, located at 1961 S. La Cienega Blvd. “When you see a picture in a magazine, most people don’t realize the work that has gone into getting the image the way it is, even if it’s just a small picture in the corner of the page.”

Co-owned by Gregori and fellow French expatriate Alain Labbe, Paris Photo caters to the upper echelon of international fashion and magazine photographers who work for publications like Elle, Paris Match and Vogue, and for designers creating ads and other marketing materials for companies like Chanel, Guess and Nike.

As such, Paris Photo is unlike most of the larger photo labs in L.A. in that it does not have many large commercial accounts but instead works closely with individual photographers who require highly specialized services.

“The photographers who come here look for a partner,” said Gregori. “They want somebody they can talk to and who understands their creativity and what they want to achieve.”

The clientele comes to L.A. from all over the United States, Asia and Europe for shoots in Southern California. They typically have their photographs developed and printed locally to make sure the pictures turned out right before they return to their home base.

It’s an industry where the reputation of a lab is established by word of mouth, and Paris Photo has become known as one of the premier places in L.A. for high-end print jobs.

“I’ve been using them for the last nine years, ever since I was first taken there by a client, and now I trust them completely,” said Veronique Vial, who is working on a book of photographs featuring Cirque du Soleil. “For me it’s a matter of communication. They have the same sensitivity as I do, whereas with other labs I’ve been to, they didn’t understand what I was talking about when I explained to them what I wanted.”

Downsizing digital

Although digital cameras are becoming ever more popular with hobbyists, Gregori is not concerned that traditional lab services will become obsolete any time soon. In fact, Paris Photo actually scaled down the number of digital services it offers clients after it became clear that its core clientele is not yet ready to exchange film for digital images.

Five years ago, the company invested heavily in what at the time was state-of-the-art digital processing and printing equipment. However, as the new equipment quickly became obsolete, and the availability of better and cheaper digital processors attracted more companies into the market, Gregori and Labbe decided to refocus and use digital imaging services only to complement their traditional film lab services.

The strategy helped push revenue from $2.6 million in 1998 to $3 million last year, and revenues are projected to hit $3.4 million this year. Currently, about 75 percent of the revenue is coming from traditional lab services and 25 percent from digital services.

With European and Japanese photo crews flocking to L.A. again (the number of photo shoots in L.A. was up by 81 percent through the first six months of the year), Paris Photo is expecting that the need for traditional lab services will continue to grow.

Enhancing beauty

The digital services now provided at Paris Photo predominantly involve enhancing and retouching photos that have gone through the traditional development and printing process. Often, these are pictures of celebrities, or images taken for fashion catalogs in which a little digital tinkering is used to achieve the desired image of perfection.

“Beauty is not what it seems, especially with celebrities,” joked Gregori. “They all want to look thinner, so we’re often asked to squeeze the pictures. And with catalogs, everything needs to look perfect and needs to be touched up, to remove a wrinkle, for example, or to make the legs of a model thinner.”

To create these perfect, digitally enhanced images is not cheap, though. According to Gregori, depending on the type of work involved, a standard-sized, digitally enhanced print costs between $100 and $150, whereas a print made from film costs around $28. Moreover, the top magazines and advertisers routinely spend thousands of dollars for just a handful of digitally perfected prints.

But even as digital processes become a more widely used tool, many professional photographers are not embracing the technology as a replacement for the traditional film process.

“I very rarely will use a digital camera,” said Vial. “I like to create the magic when taking a photograph, not add it afterwards.”