Quality Control

I [Peter (CLOUD 9's owner,)] know what it is like to deal with photography labs with low standards. Over the years I became exasperated with lousy quality control standards by commercial photography labs. Too often such labs gave me "dirty" prints [full of black and/or white specs on the print,] and blurry, out of focus, prints [even though the film I gave them from which they made the print was exposed through an expensive, clean, well focused, lens with an appropriate shutter speed.] To make matters worse, these labs also frequently gave me prints with inaccurate color, tilted horizons, and poorly cropped subject matter, even though the film supplied lacked any of these problems.

I quickly grew tired of having to ask these labs for "re-do’s," at no additional expense to me. I still remember well the sting, and my anger, arising from being told by various labs that they refused my requests for another free "red-do" because they had to maintain their "production" and if their quality control standards were too low for me they no longer wanted my business!

I also remember well one Kodak lab technician who admitted that the main reason their prints of my images did not look sharp is this: Kodak deliberately placed an anti-sharp filter between its enlarging lens and the photo paper that partially blurred out small pieces of black and white specks that would otherwise show up on the prints; however, that filter also blurred the entire image. In context, Kodak’s deliberate insertion of a filter to make the print slightly blurred defeated everything I tried to accomplish when I bought and competently used an expensive, clean, well focused lens mounted on a tripod.

I never want any CLOUD 9 PHOTOGRAPHY customer to experience any of that kind of frustration. Thus, I am obsessive about maintaining high quality control standards.

I am proud of a significant fact: Since CLOUD 9 PHOTOGRAPHY has been on the Internet, no one has sent a print back or asked for his or her money back. I want to maintain that perfect record.

To maintain high quality control standards, I have, when necessary, made a single print up to eleven (11) times before getting one that satisfied my standards. Also, on a few occasions, in order to get one satisfactory print, I have used as much as 20, 40, and even 60 feet of paper to get an acceptable print. On one occasion, I rejected a print because it had a circular, pencil point, black dot speck in the sky where it should not have been! That defect was probably in the paper.

That is part of what you are paying for when you deal with CLOUD 9 PHOTOGRAPHY.

I want CLOUD 9's customers to have confidence in me and in CLOUD 9—confidence that they will be the beneficiary of such high standards. I also want them to feel joy when they open and see a CLOUD 9 print. To help make that happen, I am obsessive about maintaining high quality control standards.

Since there is a direct relationship between the time it takes to maintain such high standards, everyone who needs a print by a certain date should order early. Why? It simply takes time to make, ship, and receive a CLOUD 9 PHOTOGRAPHY print made to exacting standards.

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