About Us

Weldon Color Lab is a full-service fine art photography laboratory in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1979, we are one of the only artist-run labs of our kind in the world.

Within our 6,200-square-foot facility near Culver City, we produce chromogenic and silver gelatin prints on our Océ LightJet 430, archival pigment prints on Canon and Epson wide-format printers, ultra-high-resolution drum scans on our Heidelberg Tango D8200, and mounted photographs up to 80 in wide.

Our clients include generations of photographers, artists, and institutions around the world.

Philosophy

At Weldon, we treat every image equally.

We hold the same standards for family photos, quinceañera pictures, or yes, iPhone photos of your cat that we do for museum-bound artworks.

This is a difficult business model, but it is the only one we find defensible.

We view our relationship with our customers as one that is highly collaborative – we teach our clients just as much as we learn from them.

We believe photography is a populist medium and should remain accessible to everyone at a high level of quality.

We know that every photograph has a spirit.

We advocate for and exert pressure on our state and local leaders to increase public support for the arts through educational, institutional, and historical programs.

History

John Weldon printed his first picture in his parents’ bathroom at age 15 in Hermosa Beach, California. Work for his high school yearbook led to a job in a photo lab at age 20.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, John specialized in Cibachrome printing, garnering a reputation as a gifted color darkroom printer.

John adopted early digital technologies, securing Weldon’s place in the 2000s as a technologically advanced and well-respected lab for consistently color-managed printing.

As Weldon Color Lab nears its 50th anniversary, we remain a small team of committed craftspeople motivated by art, photography, and the drive to be the best lab of our kind in the world.