Full Name Ira Alan Tiffen Website iratiffen.com | Nationality American | |
Born December 24, 1951 (age 65) ( 1951-12-24 ) Brooklyn, New York, United States Occupation Optics Designer and Manufacturer Known for Work with camera filters | ||
Ira Alan Tiffen (born December 24, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York) is an optics designer and glass artist who worked at the Tiffen Company from 1973 to 2004. He has been the recipient of both an Academy Award and an Emmy Award for his technical achievements in motion picture photography and video imaging.
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Early life
Ira Tiffen was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Nathan Tiffen and Helen (Rapchik) Tiffen.His father was born February 19, 1925, and his mother was born April 13, 1929. He started his career at around 19 years of age working at Tiffen on his vacation time, making filters in the lab. When he graduated college from New York University with a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering in 1973, he began his full-time job at Tiffen managing the department for laminating filter glass.
Later career
Ira Tiffen worked in various departments of Tiffen, specializing in manufacturing and product development, and eventually became the Vice President of Research and Development in the late 1980s. He would later go on to receive an honorary doctorate from Columbia College, and in 1993, he won an Academy Award, the Technical Achievement Award, for the production of the Ultra Contrast Filter Series for motion picture photography, as well as an Emmy award. He left Tiffen in 2004, and in 2007 began making glass art as a glass artist, designing his own art from glass. In 2012 he took on the position of Vice President of Motion Picture Filters at Schneider Kreuznach.