Emmerson Press has produced copies of a fund raising book of portraits by renowned photographer Rankin.
The book, titled Performance, is a tribute to the on stage, back stage and front of house staff working in London’s theatres and is intended to raise money for both the Theatre Artists Fund and homeless charities working in the capital. The images are on display at the Fuji World of Photography gallery in Covent Garden, a location surrounded by the theatres and where Rankin has created a photo studio on the top floor. Subjects, some in full make up and costume, could come in for a sitting. The images taken have then been used for display in the gallery and for the book.
The book is 120pp hardback measuring 230x320mm and printed on 200gsm Amadeus Silk from Denmaur Paper. Emmerson Press printed the job on both its Heidelberg litho press, using Fujifilm’s Superia ZD plates, and its Fuji Jetpress 750S B2 inkjet press.
Copies needed to be ready for the launch in London where Rankin discussed the project with fellow panellists including Emma De Souza, head of marketing and communications at the Society of London Theatre, director Jamie Lloyd, and producer and theatre owner Nica Burns. All feature in the book.
“I met so many incredible people working on this project. The pictures bottle up the spirit of theatre and live shows, and that is why the book is called Performance,” Rankin told the audience. He naturally used a Fujifilm camera, a medium format GFX100.
The images were retouched and corrected on the spot, creating high resolution PDFs to Emmerson’s colour profiles for the litho version and Raw RGB images needed for the Jetpress. While the pictures were colour heavy and mono pictures made extensive use of strong blacks, it was a straightforward four-colour job for the litho version, says director Jamie Emmerson. “There were a lot of dark images,” he says, “but nothing to trouble us greatly.”
The digital version made use of the extended colour gamut on the Jetpress, giving even greater impact for some of the costumes, he says.
The Kenilworth printer had three weeks to turn the project around, running into a bump almost immediately. “Even though the pages had been distilled down to PDFs we were still handling 4GB files. And then WeTransfer went down. We were thinking about sending it all on a SyQuest – if we could find one!”
As it happened this was not necessary. The publishing end received a PDF to check by way of a proof, becoming alarmed that lines had appeared. “This was an optical illusion it turned out and took us half an hour to sort out. The Superia ZD plate is a very easy plate to work with – it’s straight to press and very quickly into colour,” he explains.
The book was section sewn and bound by Tudor Print Finishing in Leicester, taking a week to turn the job around so that Emmerson could deliver to schedule on the Wednesday, ahead of the official launch the following day.
The digital version followed on from the litho. Emmerson requested RGB files amounting 12GB each. The Jetpress, he explains, works better with the larger RGB colourspace, especially where the extended gamut is to be used.
The project had to confront the current paper supply issue, meaning the original choice of 200gsm paper was not available in enough B2 sheets. The alternative worked well, however, on both litho and inkjet press.
