January 1, 1998 Purchased in 1998, the Eversmart Scitex Scanner was the essential tool that led to the founding of Pivot Media.
February 1, 1998 Using the Scitex Scanner, Pivot Media founder, Jim Gipe, began scanning his own film and creating digital illustrations in Photoshop.
January 1, 1999 Pivot Media was founded in 1999 by photographer Jim Gipe in a newly renovated building on Main St. in Florence, MA.
February 1, 1999 Pivot Media began scanning and stitching together files of the artwork at the Eric Carle Museum in 1999. The museum continues to be a steady client, taking advantage of Pivot Media’s expertise in digital capture, museum collection archiving, and editorial photography.
February 1, 1999 Using our high quality Scitex Scanner, Pivot Media began scanning film for photographers, local institutions, and other clients.
March 1, 1999 Pivot Media started working with the Smith College Museum of Art in 1999 when the museum hired Pivot Media to scan film that Stephen Petergorsky had been shooting for them.
January 1, 2000 The Pivot Gallery, located on the 2nd floor of the Main St. studio hosted work by local artists in the form of rotating group and solo exhibitions and events.
January 2, 2001 In 2001, Pivot Media upgraded to the high end Macintosh PowerBook G3, which at the time was marketed as the fasted laptop in the market.
October 9, 2003 Our first digital camera was the 11 megapixel Sinarback 43 attached to a Horseman Digiflex camera body which used a Nikon lens mount. Each photograph required 4 shots capturing the red, green and blue channels and then the green channel once more. These four exposures were combined to create a single, interpolated, 30 megabyte file.
September 1, 2004 In 2004 Jim Gipe and Stephen Petergorsky combined forces, switched to a direct digital capture workflow, and began digitally photographing the artwork at the Smith College Museum of Art (Northampton, Massachusetts) using a high end digital camera.
September 1, 2005 Our relationship with the Williams College Museum of Art began in 2005 when we photographed artwork for the “Encounter Art” project.
September 1, 2007 In 2007, Pivot Media began using the Hasselblad medium-format digital camera set-up for capturing artwork, archives, and museum collections.
January 1, 2008 In 2008, our continued relationship with the Mark Shaw Photographic Archive led to the publication of our film scans in Charmed by Audrey – Life on the set of Sabrina. Digitally capturing the film from this important collection of American photography has been an honor.
June 1, 2008 With the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College (Amherst, Massachusetts), Pivot Media worked with a team and provided digital captures of the college’s art collection for archival and educational use.
January 1, 2009 In 2009 Pivot Media celebrated its 10th anniversary with a limited edition USB drive, custom packaging, and hats for our top clients.
September 1, 2009 In 2009 we began systematically digitizing the museum’s permanent collection, starting with the ancient and African objects.
November 16, 2009 In 2009 Pivot Media purchased a state of the art Epson 9900, large-format printer.
September 1, 2010 In 2010, Pivot Media moved to Maple Street in the village of Florence (Northampton, MA), when owner Jim Give purchased the old Moriarty Medical Supply building.
July 1, 2011 At the Williams College Museum of Art, the Ancient Object project drew to a close in June of 2011 and, after a one-month break, we started digitizing the Prendergast collection.
July 13, 2013 Jim Gipe of Pivot Media and Stephen Petegorsky Photography reached a milestone in August of 2013 when they finished the digital capture and archiving of the last of the permanent collection at The Smith College Museum of Art. Pictured here is the digital team with the final object of the permanent collection to be photographed.
September 24, 2013 A collaboration between Jim Gipe, Martin Bridge, and Justin Norris, the image depicted a gigantic robin, feet firmly planted in the landscape of the Pioneer Valley, engaging in a tug-of-war with three industrial workers whose drudgery is further enhanced by the smog filled cityscape background behind them.
December 1, 2013 In 2013, our film scans for the Mark Shaw Archive appeared in People Magazine, throughout the special edition, 50th anniversary issue on the Kennedys.
January 1, 2016 Using our camera scanning workflow we digitized Robert Cumming’s photographs, 35mm slides and 8×10 negatives for his book Robert Cumming: The Difficulties of Nonsense, which was published by the Aperture Foundation in 2016.
April 1, 2016 In 2016 we collaborated again with Martin Bridge to paint a mural on the other side of the Main St. building. Combining Pivot Media founder Jim Gipe’s love of cameras and bonsai trees, Martin brought a burst of color and personality to the North wall of the studio.
May 1, 2016 Jane Lund’s artwork ranges from surreal to super real. Her pastel work, some of which is photo realistic, will stop you in your tracks, make you look twice, and leave you spell bound. If it’s not already obvious, we are big fans of Jane’s art. That’s why we were so excited when she approached us to help her scan and digitize her extensive collection of photographs of her artwork.
September 1, 2017 In 2017 we began working on the American Collection at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts). To date we have photographed, scanned and digitally captured roughly 3,500 objects in the collection, adding nearly 7,000 digital files to the e-museum server archive.
October 19, 2018 Over the course of 2018-2019, Pivot Media celebrates our 20th year in business working with our community, clients, and institutions in Florence, Northampton, the Pioneer Valley, Western Massachusetts, and beyond!
June 1, 2019 For the Florence Night Out street festival, Pivot Media hosted a variety of local artists, musicians, performers and community members. The event filled the studio and spilled out into the street in front of the shop.
Scitex Eversmart Flatbed Scanner
Digital Illustrations
Pivot Media is founded
Eric Carle Museum
Commercial Scanning
Smith College Museum of Art
Pivot Gallery
Powerbook G3
The 11 megapixel Sinarback 43 digital back
The Digital Team at the Smith College Museum of Art
Encounter Art Book – Williams College Art Museum
Hasselblad Digital System
Charmed by Audrey – Mark Shaw
Digital Imaging Project at Mead Art Museum – Amherst College
Tenth Anniversary
Ancient & African Art Collection – Williams College
First Print on the New Epson 9900
Moving to Maple Street
Prendergast Collection – Williams College
The Permanent Collection at Smith College Museum of Art
Pivot Media Wall Mural
People Magazine – The Kennedy’s
The Difficulties of Nonsense – Robert Cumming
The North Wall Mural
Capturing the Life’s Work of Jane Lund
American Art Collection – Williams College
Twentieth Anniversary
Florence Night Out, 2019
