Rangefinder Magazine
Features - June 2001

e7th.com by Jane Taylor
The All-Digital Catalog House . . .

When shoes have shine, e7th.com uses the highlights and reflections to define the shoe’s shape.

e7th.com is the Internet’s first business-to-business marketplace for “7th Avenue”—the wholesale fashion center of the world. This site electronically connects fashion vendors and retailers, saving both parties time and money. e7th.com creates and hosts vendors’ catalogs online, giving retailers the ability to view, buy, track and manage orders via the Internet. This website currently focuses on the footwear segment of the industry, but expects additional roll-outs of apparel, accessories, and fashion-related products later this year. At e7th.com, top-quality digital imaging, state-of-the-art photography and high-technology are combined to allow buyers to view incredibly detailed, high-resolution, print-quality graphics of the products on-screen. Todd Ricci, founder, president and CEO, is responsible for the overall strategic direction and vision of this innovative Internet business. Financial investors in e7th.com include Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Private Equity, MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings and a group of individuals from Bear Stearns.

Stan Shaffer, one of the original founders, is responsible for all digital imaging, content, and design of e7th’s website. Bringing more than 30 years experience as a leading fashion photographer, Stan knows how to produce exactly the kind of image needed for this electronic application. He was owner and president of Stan Shaffer Photography in New York City, one of the most successful fashion studios in the country for most of his imaging career. His client list includes some of the most recognizable companies in the world—Revlon, J. Crew, Samsonite, Brooks Brothers and Bloomingdale’s. A pioneer in digital photography, Shaffer developed the imaging for Victoria’s Secret catalog, The Limited Stores and Express.

Through three decades, his work has appeared in such prestigious fashion magazines as Vogue, Elle and The New York Times. He has also been honored with many awards for his expertise as an imagemaker, including: the Art Directors Club of New York, the Society of Publication Designers, and a CINE Eagle Award, for a film, which is still shown at art festivals worldwide. Stan also taught photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York and lectured at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Parsons School of Design. He attended engineering school at City College in New York, as well.

	High-res images are produced by e7th.com’s staff for a multitude of client uses. Image hazards like flare must be monitored carefully on monitor as the images are created.

This digital studio uses state-of-the-art photography equipment to optimize the highest image quality. Three Sinarcam 8x10 view cameras with Leaf Volare and Leaf DCB II Live digital backs are e7th’s workhorses. Sinarcams contain a shutter, filter wheel, and an LCD live video shutter for optimum output. A variety of focal length Sinaron Digital lenses are used on the cameras.

Lighting is critical for this type of digital capture, so e7th.com studio uses Broncolor lights, exclusively. Primo A power packs are microprocessor controlled and work especially well for digital imaging applications. They use Pulso and Primo flash heads, along with Hazylights, Boxlites, reflectors and a wide variety of other lighting accessories. Stan uses three power packs and four to five flash heads for each tabletop camera set-up.

Consistent lighting is extremely important in digital photography at e7th.com because the Leaf backs capture images in three passes—successive shots through red, green, and blue filters. If the amount of light seen by the CCD is not identical on each pass, uncontrollable color shifts will result.

Shoes come in various styles and colors, creating all sorts of lighting challenges for Stan and his photography staff at e7th.com. Shiny, patent leather shoes are a good example. “When we get shiny shoes, we want to show the shine, so we throw some highlights on them using a flash head with a honeycomb filter set at an angle, to accent the shine on the toe or heel of the shoe. We work with the reflections, so the shine defines the curvature of the shoes. We also use Boxlites. On the flatter shoes, like suede, we punch-up some stronger light, to bring up the detail. Each shoe is an individual. Some are like pieces of sculpture, so understanding the different shapes is critical,” Stan explains.

As for the differences between lighting for traditional photography and digital imaging, Stan believes lighting for digital “is easier, as long as you keep it balanced and don’t blow the light out of the range of the digital back. First of all, you’re seeing it on screen, so you can make quick adjustments. If you see flare, you can fix it instantaneously,” Shaffer says, smiling. “You can’t do that with traditional film!”

	Each shoe is an individual at e7th.com. Here, a Hazylight is used to provide an even blanket of soft light to bring up the image details of the shoes.

Digital images are captured at the highest resolution possible at e7th.com, so these photographs can be repositioned and used for all sorts of applications. “Shoe vendors send us the shoes they want posted online in the catalog. We photograph them. First, we get an HDR [high digital resolution] file and archive it. We save the images at the highest resolution TIFF possible. We send clients back a CD with all their images. Then we prep the image for the website. Retailers make buying decisions right off our site, so the quality must be outstanding. We produce a very high-res image that clients can use in their other photography needs, like POP displays, and magazine and newspaper ads,” Shaffer explains.

Although e7th.com opened its doors in September, 1999, Stan had been perfecting the photography for two years prior. This whole digital revolution began for Stan when The Limited Stores requested digital imaging services. At the time, he was working with Duggal Color Lab, who had an extensive digital set-up in-house. The images were captured on traditional film, then converted to digital for retouching and manipulation. He was using the huge Shima Sciki stand-alone computer, with a 36-inch monitor. Back then, digital files were stored on 12-inch magnetic tapes. However, in those days, the quality of digital capture was just not good enough, according to Shaffer.

	Image processing and fine tuning is done in the camera room, on large monitors.

Later, as the idea of a totally digital studio took root, Stan used the Sinar Leaf backs and Broncolor lights at Foto Care in Manhattan to work out the bugs before he took the plunge and opened e7th.com. Stan Shaffer is thankful to Donald Jakubowski and Foto Care owner Jeff Hirsh for the all support and technology advise and guidance given during those early years of formulating this electronic endeavor.

Currently, 60 highly-skilled employees keep e7th.com up and running. This e-commerce company already boasts 4500 retail doors onboard, with about 50 different brands of shoes represented. Sharon Begley, National Sales Director for e7th.com, is pleased with the enthusiastic response she is getting from prospective clients.

Since childhood, Stan Shaffer has been fascinated by photography, and especially fashion work. He credits this early interest in fashions to the various magazines his mother had laying around the house while he was growing up. Religiously, he studied the lighting and posing details of the images and practiced shooting fashion as a teenager. Stan even set up a small darkroom in a friend’s basement, and spent many hours experimenting with processing and printing black and white.

If the future is anything like its brief past, e7th.com will enjoy continued growth and success for many years to come. Currently, Stan is adding another 1800 square feet to the shooting space, which will double its size. According to Stan, this electronic business is expanding at a faster pace than traditional start-up businesses grow.

e7th.com’s, Stan Shaffer.

“Many of the new dot-com companies are a lot of fluff and don’t really do anything worthwhile. In time, those will either close or merge with bigger organizations. I predict that the business-to-business sites, like e7th.com, will be the next big trend because these represent solid transactions that do make money,” Stan concludes.

Readers may contact Stan Shaffer via e-mail at: estan@e7th.com or view the website at: www.e7th.com or www.shoe.net.Jane Taylor is a freelance writer based in the Midwest.