Perth Pro Lab is my business child, Paul Jarvis is my name. I am a professional photographer of some twenty odd years. I started Perth Pro Lab partially by accident and partially out of frustration.

 

Traditional photo labs used to drive me crazy when I was shooting full time! I would forever find myself dropping off my precious rolls of exposed Velvia to blank face at the front desk with little, to no comprehension of just how precious each of the 36 exposures was…. let alone understand the specific instructions I’d give as to their treatment. “Push this roll half a stop, do a clip test on that roll and that dozen all need mounting” So often my specific instructions would be lost and what I’d get back was not what was intended. To say labs frustrated me would be an understatement!

 

Then along came digital… the whole thing didn’t go pear shaped, it went triangular! Prints would ‘feature’ weird pixelations, noise, banding, weird colour… you name it, it happened!

 

Shift forward a few years, my first child, Isabella was born and I wanted to print my photos of her for the family… this was serious business, I mean photos that mattered to me so deeply, photos of my first born! Off I went and bought a printer. Unhappy with the standard prints from it, I went I bit neurotic learning every facet of the thing to extract every bit of quality from it.

 

Once I’d mastered the small machine, I figured I’d buy the bigger version, a 24 inch (61cm) machine and start printing my large stuff myself. Prints were looking pretty great!

 

A few photographer friends started asking me to print their entries for the APPA awards, the Australia Professional Photography Awards. First year, one of my clients, James Simmons took out West Australian Photographer of the Year with a folio of prints I had printed. From that point, there was no stopping it, the phone started ringing, I started printing awards prints for photographers all over the country and helped put together my first few exhibitions. Perth Pro Lab had been born in the spare room of my house!

 

This is now more than ten years ago. Perth Pro Lab outgrew the home it was conceived in and for seven years, has resided in Burswood along side my first customer, good friend and gun photographer James Simmons. In January 2022, Perth Pro Lab graduated to it’s own dedicated space in Wembley, where it now functions within Numbat Gallery, my latest evolution of the business at 61 Grantham St.

 

I have stayed far away from the flashy retail show room of traditional labs, there is no front counter, just me and some really fantastic tools to make your prints the best they can be. Numbat Gallery, the lab’s home comes from a desire to give back to the customers that trust me with their images, you guys! A warm and accomodating space with loads of natural light where you can not only put your work on the wall with a price tag, but to tell your friends, family and clients to ‘come and see my work at Numbat Gallery’

 

I am currently running Epson printers in both 64 and 17 inch. The space is completely colour managed with perfectly even 5500K GTI overhead lighting. The printers are colour profiled by the best in the business, Dr Les Walkling.

 

Perth Pro Lab is Ilford Australia’s only Master Printer and a member of the Canson Certified Print Partner program.

 

When you deal with Perth Pro Lab, you deal with me, Paul. I am this business and I’m here to make your prints look bloody amazing without all the hoo ha of traditional photo labs.