Dave Nicol, who has been with Bridgeman for six years, heads up our scanning department and has been instrumental in ensuring that imagery is the highest possible quality prior to being licensed and taken on a life of its own; from newspapers to billboards and table mats to set design.

Hi Dave, thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule to talk to the Bridgeman Buzz. Tell us a bit more about what you do…
The major part of my work concerns handling the daily scanning requirements for the library. This can include answering any queries our clients may have. On an ad hoc basis I also work on projects restoring certain images for clients or foundations the library represents such as Dali and Picasso. Over the years Bridgeman have built up an impressive collection of art books which I use for reference and recently I have been working on a project which involved visiting major galleries in London with proofs of our images. This was so we could match our digital image as closely as possible to the original painting. 
 
How would you say that the scanning department has progressed from say a year ago?
We now have two operational drum scanners within the library - one which is operated by Julian Page. This enables us to react to the more urgent requests. The third person in the team is Esmond Bridgeman who deals not only with our daily scanning requirements but with the larger more demanding requests. He now operates three ICG drum scanners and an Eversmart Supreme flatbed scanner.

How would you say we are different to other picture libraries with similar material?
I think that there is definitely a benefit in us holding transparencies and not just digital files, which some less specialized, larger image libraries throw away. If the client demands it, we can go back to the original and scan to 200mb if necessary. This is great for details.
 
We also take lots of time and care to ensure colour is correct, using huge amount of fine art books at our disposal as a reference tool and the colour bars and greyscales photographed with the paintings.  

For all non techies out there, what is difference between drum scanner and flat bed scanner please?
While the technology behind flatbed scanners has improved a lot in recent years but a drum scanner still has the edge in terms of quality. This is mainly down wider range or gamut of colours detectable by a drum. In practical terms more detail is visible in dark areas of images which are often found in oil paintings. Oil mounting the transparencies also improves the quality by hiding any scratches and suppressing the appearance of film grain. The flat bed is ideal for images that have tight deadlines and are not needed in such high resolution, such as for newspapers.

Meet with Dave - Drinks at Bridgeman
If you or your production department is interested in meeting our scanning department, we are organising some xmas drinks at our offices one evening after work in November (tbc)so please do forward on this web page to your colleagues. 

If you are interested in coming to our offices in Notting Hill please email annabel.ocf@bridgeman.co.uk with some dates that you can do by 10 November. (It should just be for an hour or so from 5.30pm.) Once we have received feedback, we will then confirm a date and notify you. Hopefully, the evening should be fun and an opportunity to answer any technical queries that you might have.