Boise commercial photography studio Tri-Digital Group carves a new niche

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Greg Sims never leaves home without at least three cameras ? and that?s when he?s traveling light.

The 56-year-old Boisean, who has been a portrait and commercial photographer for more than two decades, is never really off-duty. He travels and captures images everywhere he goes, snapping unusual buildings, iconic cityscapes and military airplanes (a personal favorite because his father was a World War II pilot who later worked for Douglas Aircraft Co.). He finds beauty in the simple things, from cracks in the sidewalk to kids eating ice cream.

Sims? work at Tri-Digital Group, a commercial photography studio at 2340 S. Vista Ave., doesn?t end with photos. That?s just where it begins.

His specialty is melding photos into eye-catching digital photo composites and photo illustrations, creating images that might otherwise be too time-consuming, logistically difficult or prohibitively expensive to execute as a single shot. As co-owner of Tri-Digital with Jim Armstrong, he?s evolved into equal parts photographer and digital artist.

Sims began developing his new niche in 2005, a couple of years before Tri-Digital was dealt a catastrophic financial blow ? the loss of a $2.5 million annual contract with Albertsons to photograph food for its advertising circulars and manage the corporate photo database. After Supervalu bought Albertsons in 2006, Supervalu executives took that work in-house in Minnesota. Albertsons was about 80 percent of Tri-Digital?s business. The firm laid off 24 members of its 35-employee staff.

Today Tri-Digital has five employees, including Sims and Armstrong. The recession has hurt. But the company has stayed profitable, avoiding debt by paying for new equipment with cash, delaying computer upgrades and renting out half of its 10,000-square-foot building to United Way.

Tri-Digital has used digital-composite and color-filtering techniques on projects ranging from the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee?s promotions for its 50th anniversary to Boise State University football.

An image can cost from a few hundred dollars to $20,000.

FROM REALITY TO FANTASY

Sims manipulates photos in Adobe Photoshop to achieve illusions not possible with pure photography. Want a sky-high view of A-10s flying over Bronco Stadium? No problem. Some who look at Tri-Digital?s images of a Bronco game flyover may wonder how the photographer got such a clear, close-up shot of the A-10s above the stadium, as if he were at the same level as the planes. He wasn?t. Sims shot the planes on the ground and then blended them with the stadium photo.

Sims can alter the mood of an image just by changing the sky. He has thousands of sky images in his digital library.

?Is it the right angle? Is it the right sun? Is it the right color? There are a lot of decisions that need to be made,? Sims said. ?There?s a lot of trial and error.?

Sims said he first began dabbling in Photoshop after a trip to New Orleans in 2004. He took a lot of photos of street scenes and was enamored of a sign on Bourbon Street. But he wasn?t happy with the photo. ?It was missing something,? he said.

So he used Photoshop to add light and color to re-create the feeling the sign evoked when he saw it.

As he accumulated more images of cityscapes from around the world, he began playing more with light and color. Then, he began adding and removing things.

In one photo he took of a building during a boat ride through Amsterdam, he added a sailboat in the foreground (a photo he?d taken in San Francisco), got rid of some industrial equipment and replaced some of the skyline with Manhattan buildings.

?I?m not trying to convince anybody that it?s something it isn?t,? he said. ?The question was, ?Can I make a compelling image?? ?

COMBINING THEIR TALENTS

Armstrong and Sims, both from Southern California, have eclectic backgrounds.

With a degree in geology, Sims worked as a crude-oil operator and later as a marine surveyor. But he had gotten into photography as a hobby in his early 20s, and he began to think of a career in it.

?I saw that first print develop, and I was gone,? Sims said. He converted a bathroom into a darkroom, took photography classes, developed a portfolio and began selling.

In December 1991, he and his then-wife moved their family to Boise. He bought a Boise photo studio.

?He?s the creative force, and I?m the business background,? said Armstrong, who studied photography long enough to realize that he ?didn?t have the creativity to tell stories in pictures.?

Armstrong developed his management skills in the restaurant industry, then worked at Western Color Print and American Color before moving to Idaho in 1998.

Armstrong and Dave Street, owner of Hi-Tech Color/Graphics Avenue, 4477 Emerald St., founded Tri-Digital Group in 2000. Sims came on later as a partner after Armstrong learned that Albertsons wanted someone local to do product photography. (Street is no longer a partner.)

?I was shooting babies one minute, asparagus the next,? Sims said.

The trio did their business plan on a napkin at the old Lock Stock & Barrel on Emerald Street. They tapped their savings for the $40,000 to get it off the ground ? $25,000 of which they spent on a Kodak DCS 560 digital camera. The camera came with a G4 Apple computer.

Then they faced a big learning curve.

?We realized we didn?t know the first thing about food stylizing,? Armstrong said. ?We worked with some chefs and realized they didn?t know anything either.?

They brought in Tracy Watts, a local food stylist. Before losing Albertsons,Tri-Digital was shooting 15,000 food products a year for circulars and magazine ads. It still does food photography for clients such as the J.R. Simplot Co. and Litehouse Foods in Sandpoint.

BEYOND SIMPLE BEAUTY SHOTS

The company has done composite images of Boise State athletes for The Blue magazine and has branched into posters, stadium banners and magnets.

?They put their creativity to work for us,? said Brad Larrondo, the university?s senior assistant athletic director for promotions and marketing. ?You can create emotion and energy through a composite piece, rather than just throw out an action photo of a game. You can feel the emotion and energy of the athlete.?

The images of Boise State players caught the eye of Nick Schenck, director of digital media and publications for the Houston Texans of the National Football League. When he needed a game program done on short notice, he sent Sims about 50 photos of running back Andre Johnson, along with stadium shots.

?We wanted that superhero cartoonish look,? Schenck said. ?They can do that hyper-real imagery. Everyone here was happy with the way it turned out.?

Tri-Digital did a whimsical series of composite images for the onion committee. The images represented different decades. The goal was to go beyond the simple beauty shots of produce or food on plates.

Sherise Jones, marketing director for the committee, said the first four images Tri-Digital created went over so well that the committee commissioned eight more that were used in ads and a calendar. In one image, girls in poodle skirts play with giant onion hula hoops in front of a diner.

?It was totally a collaboration,? Jones said. ?We all sat around a table and came up with ideas. It was a riot. It?s the most fun I?ve ever had in my life.?

Katy Moeller: 377-6413

Boise commercial photography studio Tri-Digital Group carves a new niche

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