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Today's Host: Damien Allen
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White Glove First Edition Books
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Paul Thompson Expert PageANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight is brought to you by morephotos.com bring photographers to the web to sell, display, and proof images since 1998. Welcome to the VTalk Radio Photographer Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen.
DAMIEN: Good afternoon and welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. I'm your host, Damien Allen, and today on the phone we have Mr. Paul Thompson, owner of White Glove First Edition Books in Huntington Beach, California. Good afternoon and welcome to the program, Paul.
PAUL: Hey Damien, how you doing?
DAMIEN: Not too bad. We understand you have a thriving business out there in Huntington Beach, California. Can you tell us a little bit about White Glove First Editions Books.
PAUL: Yeah, absolutely, it's doing pretty good. We're a company, myself and my partner. We're photographers. We've been photographers, you know, I've been a photographer for 30 years and he for about 25 years, and we used to get together and say, you know, I wonder what this industry needs, and we saw the advent of digital and frames were changing and styles were changing, and we said, you know, in my career of being a photographer, I've seen albums go from white to brown to black and nothing else. And so about 11 years ago, we got together and we invented White Glove First Edition Books. It's rather unique. It pretty much revolutionized the photo industry. It's a coffee table book. It's just like you go to a bookstore and buy a book, this is what it's like. It's not an album. It's very different.
DAMIEN: Alright, and as a book, what types of books...coffee table books...you offer?
PAUL: We have about 29 different styles. You know from imported hand-made paper to bonded leather to, oh gosh, high tech kind of a book, all sorts of different kinds. I think the unique thing about what we have, though, is we offer three different services for the photographer. We sell directly to the photographer, and they can either have us design it, print it and bind it; or they can actually do the design, and we can print and bind; or they can actually design it and print it and we can be the bindery for them. So it's really a product that photographers across the nation have really come around to thinking is incredible and like it a lot.
DAMIEN: And as this is the digital age, could I as a professional photographer upload my files to you via the web, or do I need to data to send to you through snail mail?
PAUL: Nope, we have FTP so you can put them directly on the web, and we can down load them and don't have to use anything at all. Its' easy.
DAMIEN: And as you're a bindery, do you use glue binding or stitch binding?
PAUL: We use glue binding. Yeah, very different. You know, you're talking to somebody who researched all of this for probably two years before we really jumped into it, and we found out what would be the best product to do, what would last the longest, and what would be the best on the environment and we tested everything. We did R&D for, like I said, a couple of years, and then came up with our own unique way of a patent pending binding process so it's a pretty cool book. You can throw it on the ground and it won't break. We like that.
DAMIEN: That's a very important thing, because sometimes things get picked off the coffee table and flung.
PAUL: True.
DAMIEN: As a father of many children, I know that quite well.
PAUL: How many kids do you have?
DAMIEN: I have five now.
PAUL: What are you doing to this population explosion?
DAMIEN: Well I was the last member of my family.
PAUL: Most people ask me how many children I have.
DAMIEN: How many children do you have?
PAUL: I have four daughters, so I know what you're talking about.
DAMIEN: Oh, my condolences to you. I have four sons.
PAUL: Oh, no.
DAMIEN: Four sons, one daughter, x chromosome deficient.
P. Yeah.
DAMIEN: Now, do you still manipulate film in any way...the actual film stock? Or is everything done digitally there?
PAUL: Good question. You know, we've seen it from eleven years when we were actually scanning prints to, you know, then we wouldn't take prints, and then we scanning negatives to we hardly get any orders. You know, we get tons of orders every day. We hardly get any orders for scanning negatives anymore. Everybody pretty much has gone digital so it's files.
DAMIEN: Good deal. Now, with the albums themselves, what things do I need to look for as far as care? If I was to receive one of these albums from my photographer, you say it could be thrown on the ground it's going to stand up, but how long do they stand up. How do we keep them clean?
PAUL: We guaranty them for life. It's not even a question. It used to be, you know, it was such an ordeal to get all the pictures printed if something went wrong with the album. You know, with a coffee table book, it's a simple thing. I've got the file, you know, if somebody damaged it by mistake or it fell in the swimming pool, we just press print and bind another book and it's an easy thing. So, of course, if it was a mistake of the client who did something, they would have to pay for a book, but it's that simple to do, because we keep the files.
DAMIEN: And, am I able to have a wedding book drop shipped to my customer as a photographer from your site?
PAUL: Oh, yeah, absolutely. We do that a lot, you know, a lot of photographers won't want to, because they want to see what we've done with their books. So they like to see that part of it. Even though they go on the web and approve it before we go to press. So that has to be done.
DAMIEN: Ok, so you do have online proofing before.
PAUL: Oh, of course.
DAMIEN: Good deal, good deal. And if I wanted samples, or if I wanted to place an order through you, how do I contact you?
PAUL: Yeah, you can reach us at www.wgbooks.com. That's the way to see our website and, of course, wgbooks@wgbooks.com to get ahold of us, and we are happy to help anybody out on your first time around and make it easy and like I said we guaranty these for life. Huge part of and something we haven't talked about really is the design factor. Design is huge and besides being a photographer, I'm a graphic designer and when you design a book, it used to be when you make a photograph, you wanted leading lines and you wanted contrast and saturation, impact and all of those things on one print. But now when you design a spread for a book, you want all of that to be in the book so your left and right page, however many pictures you put in it, or how you do opacity, or sepia tone, or black and white, or different color borders, you want all of this to tell a story. So story telling is really a huge part of making a book really stand out so that everybody is going to go, oh I've never seen anything like this. You don't just want to turn the page, you have a picture, turn the page, you have a picture, or four pictures. You want to tell a story and that comes with graphic design. So there are many, many rules regarding graphic design, and you can break them for a good reason. So, that's kind of how White Glove is; we are really known as pretty much a really high end book in quality and the design feature so, we're proud of that.
DAMIEN: You mention that you use leathers and heavy grade papers. Are there any other materials used in the design of your books?
PAUL: Yeah, there are, we have an imported book plass. We have ultra suedes, imported, hand-made papers, like I said, leather. We've even had a bride who just loved her bridesmaids' dresses, and she sent us the fabric for the bridesmaids' dresses, and we made books out of bridesmaids' dresses. You can pretty much make a book out of anything you want. It's just, you know, there's no end to this.
DAMIEN: So you have an open palette?
PAUL: Pretty much an open palette. Yeah, we like doing new things, and, you know, making our books...their pretty much on the cutting edge which we like as well. We have tons of high end photographers, but we have found that the photography industry, it kind of, changes start on the coast so you can, you know, the west coast and the east coast, and then they filter into the mainstream in the middle. And I think we're at the point now where we're getting a lot of middle America wanting our books. They're understanding this isn't just a fad, it's something that's going to last. It really is. It's cutting edge, and it's kind of more the norm. I think that the old albums; they are no more. They're such few and far between that people just don't want that; it's just old fashion looking.
DAMIEN: And if you would like to see samples of what White Glove is turning out, you can go to www.wgbooks.com; that's how you can contact them and get more information. We've have been speaking with Paul Thompson, owner of White Glove First Edition Books from Huntington Beach, California. Thank you very much for joining us today, Paul.
PAUL: Thank you, Damien. It was my pleasure.
DAMIEN: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. My name is Damien Allen. Have a great afternoon.
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