In the 1970s, 60 Minutes Photo was the first one-hour photo development lab in West Palm Beach, Fla. Today, its ability to continue to offer innovative solutions with top-notch, in-person customer service has helped keep it in business during a time when online competition keeps heating up.
“Photo labs are becoming a dying breed,” says Renea Hutchings, who owns 60 Minutes Photo with her husband, Harold. “We’re more of a custom lab. People walk in and we have consulting where we can pull up their image and show them how it will look at a certain size. We work with both professionals and amateur photographers. Today, we’re one of the only all-around labs in Palm Beach County.”
The team pairs that customer-intimate approach with photo restoration work as well as up-to-the-minute photo reproduction trends, such as acrylic glass art, photo books, t-shirts, puzzles and metal prints, utilizing a variety of print technologies and substrates, based on their customers’ preferences.
The metal prints are particularly popular these days, Hutchings says, because of their sleek look and color reproduction. “If you have a really good shot, and we sublimate it on metal, we can get a really good print,” she says.
Her production team opts for Chromaluxe Photo Panels and LexJet InFuze Rigid Substrate Dye-Sub Paper for transferring the image to the metal. “Our guys like the InFuze better than the others they’ve used — it feels thicker and it’s more porous, so it holds more ink when we sublimate it — it heats better and works better, especially with the photo panels,” Hutchings says.
When finishing the panels, the 60 Minutes team adds customized hanging fixtures with stainless steel buttons and sticks that are adhered to the back and can hold panels as large as 30-by-40 inches — and they deliver the final product within just a few days.
“We have some interior designer customers in Wellington, which is a huge horse-show world,” she says. “Their photos can be sublimated onto metal and hung outside on patios or in these multi-million-dollar horse barns. You can pretty much just squirt them with a hose and wipe them off. They’re pretty indestructible”
Another popular wall art item the team produces is photos printed Sunset Photo Metallic Paper and adhered to acrylic. “The image just pops,” Hutchings says. “It’s not like looking at a regular print.” She says portrait photographers, restaurants, sports bars and healthcare facilities are just a few of the types of customers opting for these two dynamic options.
To learn more about photo reproduction options, connect with a LexJet print specialist to day at 800-453-9538.
