Product Support Specialist, James

We have a team of experienced and passionate professionals who are dedicated to providing our customers with the best possible products and support. Our team includes experts in software development, image processing, and photography.

What is your background?

I was born in Croydon South London but moved to Colchester at the age of 6 and have lived there most of my life, apart from at the age of 12 I had the opportunity to live in the Falkland Islands for a year, where I learnt a lot of life skills and found my love for the outdoors, which may explain why I have been involved in Scouting most of my life.

Tell us a bit more about yourself:

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I began my career at Redwood Photographic at the age of 17, working on Durst printers printing school’s packages for sale or return and moving on the Pick-a-Pack proofs and packages. This was the first time I had been involved with Halsys as a customer of theirs, using the LabServer system. I later specialised in colour grading, hand printing, and transitioning to digital photography. Over the years, I advanced to become a director, managing the business until its closure in 2016.

An opportunity arose at Color World and Kittle Photographic before transitioning to freelance photography, digital retouching, and workflow advising. Then the pandemic hit, and I utilised my HGV license for essential deliveries. Post-pandemic, I joined Halsys while continuing freelance work, combining my technical and creative expertise.

Outside of work I am a keen walker especially with my two dogs Max (6 year old Springer Spaniel) and Molly (15 year old Beagle), loving coastal paths around the British Isles. I am also a rock climber, having climbed around Europe in my youth, still climbing a little now but less extreme.

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How long have you been with Halsys?

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I started with Halsys in 2020, but have known the company since the early 90’s as a customer.

What do you enjoy about working with the team?

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It’s a great collaborative environment. I love that we all ensure we provide a great level of customer service, we are all on the same page striving to help our customers. Our ethos across the team aligns.

What is your area of expertise?

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Industry knowledge, I have run a lab using Halsys software, I have been a schools photographer using Halsys barcode readers on the camera and when I do freelance retouching I cull and crop images through MaxLab. When our customers speak of the issues they are having I can empathise with their problems.

What’s your favourite feature of MaxLab?

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There are so many I’m not sure which one to choose, I guess I would have to say the auto cropping, auto rejecting and auto selecting best image using face detection, such a game changer, and if I can have a second it would be the batch order workflow from website to production, it’s great at getting a bulk amount of work through quickly and efficiently.

Favourite piece of customer feedback?

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We get such great feedback from our customers, verbal and written, anything that highlights the extra mile we all go for our customers is great, but this one stands out as a huge tick for MaxLab, and what we strive to achieve:

”Since installing MaxLab we haven’t had to do any overtime in the Lab.” (The customer was in their second Autumn term at this point.)

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?

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Being able to speak and understand the animals, I might finally fathom out what goes through my Molly the Beagle’s mind.

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Connect with James on LinkedIn

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