Tom Stratton’s Biography
Originally educated as an engineer and mathematician, Tom Stratton entered professional photography two decades ago. After completing his engineering degree in 1986 he became interested in photography and worked as a printer, then as an assistant and ultimately as an editorial photographer. Later, his analytical and creative sides merged as he evolved into an expert in digital retouching, post production and color management.
His transition into a digital post production expert started when he created the digital imaging department for Alternistock, a dot-com era stock agency. Subsequently he was asked to manage the color and data for a cutting-edge digital video projection of a 3-D Sesame Street film project. In the late 90’s he started working with nationally recognized photographers to create solutions to digital imaging difficulties on set, and in the office. He began speaking nationally about digital imaging, post production, and color management. He has been a Beta-tester for Adobe Photoshop CS2 through CS5, consulted with Kodak on their DCS pro-back software and worked closely with a leading inkjet printer manufacturer on their products.
In 2003 he founded Image Mechanics with Michael Grecco to help photographers with the analog-to-digital transition. The company specialized in providing digital services for photographers who were NOT digital. Tom’s next venture was as the technical director of digital services at The Icon lab in Los Angeles where he led a team of 20 to provide digital post production and printing services to photographers, advertisers and publishers. The Icon lab is one of the largest pro-labs in the country and is now a leader in providing digital imaging services.
During his time at The Icon, Tom’s responsibilities pushed him into project management and business strategy. He continued to consult for The Icon after leaving in 2008 and added several other clients to his roster. In 2009 Tom approached Image Mechanics to get their help in producing the Collision Conference - one of the first events to help photographers make the transition from still to motion photography. After the conference he and production partner Michael Britt created “PhotoCine News”, a website devoted to continuing the conversation started at the Collision Conference. They then produced a new conference, PhotoCine Expo in 2010.
Workflow and pipeline design in the still photography world led naturally to an interest in film and video-game pipeline work. Tom was asked to be the Shotgun Administrator by the 3-D conversion team on the feature film Immortals by Christopher Brown of 3DGC (the 3D Consulting Group) where he had to develop custom tools to integrate Avid EDL’s into the Shotgun workflow.
Tom is currently active providing consulting and project management services to clients across many industries while looking for the next “Big Thing”