Rob Caswell of Sky Lake Studios
116 Pleasant Street (Eastworks building) – Suite 118 (first floor, across from the Apollo Grill)
10am – 6pm, M-F
413.527.5350 (appointments encouraged)
http://www.skylakestudios.com/
Introducing our member, Rob Caswell, operator of Sky Lake Studios: a fine art giclee printer for photographers and artists. Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be at Sky Lake.
“A little”? For the sake of brevity I wish my path here were more direct, but I think my meandering actually brings more strength to the services I provide. I’m never sure what job will walk in the door next, so having a diverse graphics background to work from has been a real plus.
That said, I’ll give you the condensed version and hope it paints sufficient detail. I’ve had a passion for art and illustration as far back as I could pick up an object to marks on paper. Unfortunately I grew up during the Space Race, when most boys were taught – directly or implied – that art was not a profession and that math, science, and engineering were the only credible career paths. While my interest in art remained strong, I foolishly caved into the academic peer pressure.
When I was three quarters through my Astronomy/Physics degree at U.Mass. Amherst, it became obvious to me I’d made a mistake. I mean I was lousy at math, so what was I thinking?! My career since graduation consisted of trying to make that course correction back towards art and graphics, where my talents and passions always lay.
My professional pursuits have been varied, but art/design/creativity has been the common thread sewing it together. I’ve been a commercial interior design drafter, technical and fiction writer, publication layout artist, editor, illustrator (in both the physical and digital mediums), software instructor, comic book letterer, computer game designer, photo restorer, web designer, photographer, and photo retouch artist. So with this crazy blend under my belt, joining Shelley at Sky Lake seemed like a logical way to put those skills to use.
How long has Sky Lake Studios been in Easthampton?
Shelley Lake founded the studio in 2001. Shelley comes from a similarly diverse background, but she is stronger on the photo side, where my background leaned a bit more towards graphics and illustration. But we have a fair amount of overlap.
Shelley brought me on in 2005 so that she could spend more time with her photography, which you can see here: www.shelleylake.com. She’s now in Florida and is in the process of opening up a new branch of the studio in the Orlando area.
What do you do there? Can you tell us about the services available at Sky Lake for artists?
In a nutshell, we provide museum-quality fine art printing services for the art community. All our materials – inks and substrates – are archival and we offer print sizes up to 44” wide by 90” long. Many photographers and artists have their own desktop printers, but we provide the opportunity for people to print larger as well as the skills and equipment for those who don’t want to be bothered with investing their own time and knowledge in the process.
We can make prints from digital photo files or scan negatives. We also offer art reproduction for physical media – paintings and the like. We use a hi res digital camera to shoot the art, create a master file, and then massage that file in Photoshop to match the original. No matter how good a photo you take, it always takes some degree of nudging and tweaking in Photoshop to get a result that’s faithful to the original. It’s that part of the process that takes the most time and skill.
We print on a variety of inkjet substrates: various fine art papers, canvases, and vinyl. The beauty of the technology is that artists don’t need to print all at once. You can print as you go, thus saving the big up-front investment of making an edition on a press. Plus the whole process is more intimate, interactive, and accurate so the results better satisfy the artist’s expectations.
Is there anything unique about your studio and the services that you provide?
Hm. It’s hard to say for certain as I haven’t visited too many other giclee studios, but based on what we hear from customers I think we stand out in a couple of areas. One is our commitment to color quality. We pride ourselves about being as picky as the artist when it comes to color reproduction and we optimize the work for print, not just screen display. I guess it just comes from Shelley and I treating any customer’s art with the same attention to detail as we give our own. We don’t aim to create work that looks “pretty close”, we shoot for as spot on as the technology will allow – which is pretty darn accurate. It means the process often takes more time, but we view this as a “no compromise” area.
We also pride ourselves on being accessible to the artist – making the process fairly interactive. More often than not we’re sitting down with our customers to work on key adjustments during the proof process. This helps us gauge what the artist is after and assures that the print measures up to their expectations.
So if an artist brings in a digital image you can help them "clean" up the image?
Minor clean is included as part our print prep routine. We can do more extensive work, like that needed with photo restoration. That work usually carries added cost just because of the time required. But every image in the door gets some degree of attention to prepare it to looks its best in print form.
You've seen a lot of artists come through with their work wanting prints made for resale. Do you have any advice for someone who has never done this before?
Well…hm. What first comes to mind is “keep your feet on the ground”. Many folks just getting into this think that once they’ve posted their prints for sale on the web, they’ll be flooded with orders. I’ve had more than a few artists calling me to say “I’ve just put up a Web promotion – get ready to be deluged!” I’ve yet to see a deluge materialize.
I think it’s just hard to sell your art on the web. First off your web image is often substantially sub-sized from the original so it makes it harder for the collector to gauge what they’re buying. The other is that it’s a really crowded marketplace. It’s not enough just to post your work, you’ve got to be as proactive as possible in marketing it. They key is to drive traffic to your site and present the work in as appealing a format as possible.
Even the artists I’ve worked with who aggressively promote their work have only what I’d call “moderate” sales. So just try to keep your expectations realistic and invest as much hands on promotion time as you can muster.
What do you like most about what you do?
I like the surprises. No two jobs are ever quite alike. There’s always new challenges. One day I might be neck deep in fine tuning the colors on an oil painting, the next I could be making prints by scanning images of Eleanor Roosevelt from 8mm film. It’s always something different and I love the variety and the personalities.
It’s also fun watching someone’s face when they see their work large and in print for the first time. That’s one of the moments that makes my successes tangible and it’s great to share in their excitement.
Do you do any art yourself, now?
Yeah… I spend my whole day in front of a monitor, then I go home and spend my evenings in front of a monitor. The past few years I’ve started playing with 3D illustration. It’s been fun to play and explore with the medium, but the best part is I can do it for me – no clients, no deadlines. Not sure where it’ll go and if it will eventually lead me back to commercial illustration, but for the time being I’m just having fun with it as a creative outlet.
“A little”? For the sake of brevity I wish my path here were more direct, but I think my meandering actually brings more strength to the services I provide. I’m never sure what job will walk in the door next, so having a diverse graphics background to work from has been a real plus.
That said, I’ll give you the condensed version and hope it paints sufficient detail. I’ve had a passion for art and illustration as far back as I could pick up an object to marks on paper. Unfortunately I grew up during the Space Race, when most boys were taught – directly or implied – that art was not a profession and that math, science, and engineering were the only credible career paths. While my interest in art remained strong, I foolishly caved into the academic peer pressure.
When I was three quarters through my Astronomy/Physics degree at U.Mass. Amherst, it became obvious to me I’d made a mistake. I mean I was lousy at math, so what was I thinking?! My career since graduation consisted of trying to make that course correction back towards art and graphics, where my talents and passions always lay.
My professional pursuits have been varied, but art/design/creativity has been the common thread sewing it together. I’ve been a commercial interior design drafter, technical and fiction writer, publication layout artist, editor, illustrator (in both the physical and digital mediums), software instructor, comic book letterer, computer game designer, photo restorer, web designer, photographer, and photo retouch artist. So with this crazy blend under my belt, joining Shelley at Sky Lake seemed like a logical way to put those skills to use.
How long has Sky Lake Studios been in Easthampton?
Shelley Lake founded the studio in 2001. Shelley comes from a similarly diverse background, but she is stronger on the photo side, where my background leaned a bit more towards graphics and illustration. But we have a fair amount of overlap.
Shelley brought me on in 2005 so that she could spend more time with her photography, which you can see here: www.shelleylake.com. She’s now in Florida and is in the process of opening up a new branch of the studio in the Orlando area.
What do you do there? Can you tell us about the services available at Sky Lake for artists?In a nutshell, we provide museum-quality fine art printing services for the art community. All our materials – inks and substrates – are archival and we offer print sizes up to 44” wide by 90” long. Many photographers and artists have their own desktop printers, but we provide the opportunity for people to print larger as well as the skills and equipment for those who don’t want to be bothered with investing their own time and knowledge in the process.
We can make prints from digital photo files or scan negatives. We also offer art reproduction for physical media – paintings and the like. We use a hi res digital camera to shoot the art, create a master file, and then massage that file in Photoshop to match the original. No matter how good a photo you take, it always takes some degree of nudging and tweaking in Photoshop to get a result that’s faithful to the original. It’s that part of the process that takes the most time and skill.
We print on a variety of inkjet substrates: various fine art papers, canvases, and vinyl. The beauty of the technology is that artists don’t need to print all at once. You can print as you go, thus saving the big up-front investment of making an edition on a press. Plus the whole process is more intimate, interactive, and accurate so the results better satisfy the artist’s expectations.
Is there anything unique about your studio and the services that you provide?
Hm. It’s hard to say for certain as I haven’t visited too many other giclee studios, but based on what we hear from customers I think we stand out in a couple of areas. One is our commitment to color quality. We pride ourselves about being as picky as the artist when it comes to color reproduction and we optimize the work for print, not just screen display. I guess it just comes from Shelley and I treating any customer’s art with the same attention to detail as we give our own. We don’t aim to create work that looks “pretty close”, we shoot for as spot on as the technology will allow – which is pretty darn accurate. It means the process often takes more time, but we view this as a “no compromise” area.
We also pride ourselves on being accessible to the artist – making the process fairly interactive. More often than not we’re sitting down with our customers to work on key adjustments during the proof process. This helps us gauge what the artist is after and assures that the print measures up to their expectations.
So if an artist brings in a digital image you can help them "clean" up the image?Minor clean is included as part our print prep routine. We can do more extensive work, like that needed with photo restoration. That work usually carries added cost just because of the time required. But every image in the door gets some degree of attention to prepare it to looks its best in print form.
You've seen a lot of artists come through with their work wanting prints made for resale. Do you have any advice for someone who has never done this before?
Well…hm. What first comes to mind is “keep your feet on the ground”. Many folks just getting into this think that once they’ve posted their prints for sale on the web, they’ll be flooded with orders. I’ve had more than a few artists calling me to say “I’ve just put up a Web promotion – get ready to be deluged!” I’ve yet to see a deluge materialize.
I think it’s just hard to sell your art on the web. First off your web image is often substantially sub-sized from the original so it makes it harder for the collector to gauge what they’re buying. The other is that it’s a really crowded marketplace. It’s not enough just to post your work, you’ve got to be as proactive as possible in marketing it. They key is to drive traffic to your site and present the work in as appealing a format as possible.
Even the artists I’ve worked with who aggressively promote their work have only what I’d call “moderate” sales. So just try to keep your expectations realistic and invest as much hands on promotion time as you can muster.
What do you like most about what you do?
I like the surprises. No two jobs are ever quite alike. There’s always new challenges. One day I might be neck deep in fine tuning the colors on an oil painting, the next I could be making prints by scanning images of Eleanor Roosevelt from 8mm film. It’s always something different and I love the variety and the personalities.
It’s also fun watching someone’s face when they see their work large and in print for the first time. That’s one of the moments that makes my successes tangible and it’s great to share in their excitement.
Do you do any art yourself, now?
Yeah… I spend my whole day in front of a monitor, then I go home and spend my evenings in front of a monitor. The past few years I’ve started playing with 3D illustration. It’s been fun to play and explore with the medium, but the best part is I can do it for me – no clients, no deadlines. Not sure where it’ll go and if it will eventually lead me back to commercial illustration, but for the time being I’m just having fun with it as a creative outlet.
2 comments:
Great interview, Rob. I enjoyed learning more about you--you certainly had a varied and interesting path leading you to Sky Lake. Thanks for taking the time to think through your answers and sharing them with us.
I've had 2 of my paintings photographed and reproduced by Rob. I'd recommend him to anyone and am so glad to have Sky Lake as a local resource! Thank you!
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