LET'S TALK RETOUCHING!

I want to introduce a new format to this show. To begin with this episode, Kai, please give us a very quick overview of who you are, what you do and then we will dive deeper into all the good and interesting things later on

How would you define retouching?

© Marina Murasheva

How have you gotten into retouching?

Which is your favorite field to work in?

What hardware are you using?

Are You a PC or a MAC guy?

What software are you using?

How is your main workflow to get your images done. Please describe the process from start to finish.

Can you name one thing you wish to have know way before now? A thing that would have saved you a lot of trouble?

A topic many people like to know about is how to approach clients. What is your main channel to attract possible clients? Website, social media, direct approach,…

© Alexander Van Keulen

Hi I’m Glyn Dewis,
I’m a Photographer, Educator, Westcott Top Pro and proud to say, a Best Selling Author. I guess I initially became known in the Industry because of my Retouching / Post Production which led me to work with clients such as the BBC, SKY TV and the Fox Network but after my first book, The Photoshop Workbook was published in January 2015 having made it a focus (no pun intended) I’m recognised for my Portrait Photography body of work.

Before we get into how you can get better with seeing and using color let us discuss why talking about color is important:

Far gone are the days of black and white only. Almost everything we visually consume is in color. If it is not it is an artistic choice but we are no longer limited by technology to only display monochromatic to consumers and thus can communicate many more messages to these consumers.

This is highly important in the field of advertising as colors help to contribute to the appeal and make more sales. The appeal and emotion portrait in images are also important in the fine arts. So, we need to know, understand the theory behind it and we need to practically use this knowledge to create more value for our customers.

Brock McFadzean is a visual communicator who currently resides in Sydney, Australia. He uses photography as a medium to express his ideas and thought processes visually. His work is a mix of highly graphical architectural elements and simplistic yet emotive images between Portraiture, Fashion and Architecture. He is continually challenging and pushing the creative and technical boundaries within his work. Through his ever growing desire to learn, Brock has had the opportunity to travel internationally in post production and assisting other photographers on their projects.

My unique photojournalism style is now incorporated into my studio, commercial, and fashion photography shoots. I never capture a posed reaction; I always capture something natural, and wonderful. I find true beauty comes in short burst, and it is my job to capture the split second reaction. Everyone has a natural elegance, and beauty. Sometimes it’s hidden, but I always find a way to bring it out of people with humor, honesty, and passion.

Today we get into the deeps of retouching, talk with Erika about the gear she is using and which software allows her to create and finish up her images.

We have grown into a society that has to be more knowledgeable about technology than ever before. We are digital natives and what is expected of us is different from what was expected of people just 10 years ago.

The more we get away from manual labor the more we have to evolve into a creative mindset and not only understand the current technology but also where it came from. In the future, we are going to get paid to think and less to work. We are going to be problem solvers.

Everything has become more advanced. This is also true for retouching. We came from working with film where it was quite a delic

Brock McFadzean is a visual communicator who currently resides in Sydney, Australia. He uses photography as a medium to express his ideas and thought processes visually. His work is a mix of highly graphical architectural elements and simplistic yet emotive images between Portraiture, Fashion and Architecture. He is continually challenging and pushing the creative and technical boundaries within his work. Through his ever growing desire to learn, Brock has had the opportunity to travel internationally in post production and assisting other photographers on their projects.

Brock is a multimedia multi-talent from Australia. He works as a photographer and retoucher but also gets to join big productions as the digital assistant and develops digita

Recently we met with Gerry Kingsley to have a conversation on retouching, education, branding, and some other topics. If you have missed his introduction and the first part of our conversation, please, check out Let’s Talk Retouching Part #1.

We are going to continue our discussion with Gerry today. Our main topics are: business models, branding, different fields of retouching, client expectations,…



There are different fields of retouching: Editorial, Corporate, Advertising, CGI + 2D, …

Many of them require different skill sets and with different clients come different expectations. The challenge is to stick out and to also manage your workflows, your skills suitable for your client’s needs. This is important to be valued by your clients and to work efficiently and professionally, but also to make enough money to stay in business.

A hard lesson to learn is not to take any job. Of course, we all want to make money! But what often happens is, when you are trying to cover a lot of different styles and fields within the industry, you often end up “mediocre” or better, not specialized. It is impossible to specialize in everything.

Specializing and refining the craft you enjoying will pay off in the long run and clients will eventually come to you for your specialization. The expert will always be more valued than a generalist.

However, be patient. Building a business takes time, don’t expect to reach the top in no time. It will take dedication, refinement of your skills and constant education to eventually become a profitable business.

As we mentioned before, it pays off to become an expert in the field you love working in. But how will you accomplish this goal?

One of the best tips to grow your business is to invest time into making connections with possible clients. You have to see this as an investment, even though it is hard. It might come in the form of working for free or for exposure, however, you have to see it as building reports with people who might eventually hire you for a job. If you get your foot in the door and people like your work and how you communicate, they will come back to working with you again.

That does not necessarily mean you have to work for free, always. I am not trying to say yet. You should never undervalue or undercut yourself. But working for someone can also be as valuable as spending money on advertising. Instead of money, you invest your time and skills.

With different fields of photography and retouching the client expectations are different and so should your approach to working on such images.

More

My unique photojournalism style is now incorporated into my studio, commercial, and fashion photography shoots. I never capture a posed reaction; I always capture something natural, and wonderful. I find true beauty comes in short burst, and it is my job to capture the split second reaction.

As freelancers, we are only as good as our physical and mental “fitness” allows us to be. While maintaining and learning new skills is great we also have to think about possible setbacks and how to deal with these.

In our work-lives and private lives, disappointments are inevitably gonna affect us. Feelings of anger, self-doubt, sadness, regret, hinder us from being productive and being focused on the tasks and goals we want to achieve, both, in our personal lives and out jobs. That’s why we are going to talk about Disappointments today and about tactics to help us deal with them.

We want to find success and fulfill our dreams. It is just hard work, right? By our parents, in school, … I am sure almost every one of us has been taught that hard work is going to be rewarded.  So it would be just a matter of time when we would be able to harvest the fruits of said hard work. But life does not come without its hurdles and often disappointments are inevitable.

We as business persons have to deal not just with professional disappointments but also in our private lives. This, at times, makes running a business and being a good person incredibly hard.

Disappointment comes in a wide variety. How some deals and business relationships turned out can be a huge disappointment, how we saw a person in our life who happened to turn out to be completely different…..but also, we can be disappointed about ourselves, for little mistakes we make but also for not reaching our goals, for not being where we think we are supposed to be.

All these questions are normal. We all fail, we all make mistakes and we all experience self-doubt! We all experience disappointment with feelings of sadness, regret, and anger when our expectations in life or our jobs are not met.

From my experience, there are two main ways of dealing with disappointments.

One is the obvious, Change, which is repeated all over every self-help book ever written. If you have failed, try differently, if your way of doing things does not lead to the expected results, change. If you are unhappy, do something that cheers you up. If you don’t earn enough money, look for another job, other clients, rebrand, and so on. I think this approach is the easiest to explain and the easiest to suggest. I have to refer again to self-help books here as this mainly is the only tool or tactic recommended in such books because it is easy to give this advice. While dealing with disappointments itself is never easy this advice also is not applicable to every situation you might face.

So let us explore what other ways there are to dealing with disappointments when change is not an option. What if you are not in control of your reason for disappointment? What can we do to deal with these emotional reactions which keep us from fulfilling our dreams?

Acceptance is the other main way of dealing with disappointments. However, this needs some more clarification as to what this means is not necessarily native understanding to many of us.

When compared to the other ways of dealing with disappointments, acceptance, can easily be seen as resignation, the passive approach without taking any actions. I think there still is a big difference between resignation and acceptance!

While one means resigning ourselves to the situation without taking action to change our situation or our mental state, the other is working with life as it is. Dealing with situations we do not have an

As freelancers, we are only as good as our physical and mental “fitness” allows us to be. While maintaining and learning new skills is great we also have to think about possible setbacks and how to deal with these.

In our work-lives and private lives, disappointments are inevitably gonna affect us. Feelings of anger, self-doubt, sadness, regret, hinder us from being productive and being focused on the tasks and goals we want to achieve, both, in our personal lives and out jobs. That’s why we are going to talk about Disappointments today and about tactics to help us deal with them.

We want to find success and fulfill our dreams. It is just hard work, right? By our parents, in school, … I am sure almost every one of us has been taught that hard work is going to be rewarded.  So it would be just a matter of time when we would be able to harvest the fruits of said hard work. But life does not come without its hurdles and often disappointments are inevitable.

We as business persons have to deal not just with professional disappointments but also in our private lives. This, at times, makes running a business and being a good person incredibly hard.

Disappointment comes in a wide variety. How some deals and business relationships turned out can be a huge disappointment, how we saw a person in our life who happened to turn out to be completely different…..but also, we can be disappointed about ourselves, for little mistakes we make but also for not reaching our goals, for not being where we think we are supposed to be.

All these questions are normal. We all fail, we all make mistakes and we all experience self-doubt! We all experience disappointment with feelings of sadness, regret, and anger when our expectations in life or our jobs are not met.

From my experience, there are two main ways of dealing with disappointments.

One is the obvious, Change, which is repeated all over every self-help book ever written. If you have failed, try differently, if your way of doing things does not lead to the expected results, change. If you are unhappy, do something that cheers you up. If you don’t earn enough money, look for another job, other clients, rebrand, and so on. I think this approach is the easiest to explain and the easiest to suggest. I have to refer again to self-help books here as this mainly is the only tool or tactic recommended in such books because it is easy to give this advice. While dealing with disappointments itself is never easy this advice also is not applicable to every situation you might face.

So let us explore what other ways there are to dealing with disappointments when change is not an option. What if you are not in control of your reason for disappointment? What can we do to deal with these emotional reactions which keep us from fulfilling our dreams?

Acceptance is the other main way of dealing with disappointments. However, this needs some more clarification as to what this means is not necessarily native understanding to many of us.

When compared to the other ways of dealing with disappointments, acceptance, can easily be seen as resignation, the passive approach without taking any actions. I think there still is a big difference between resignation and acceptance!

While one means resigning ourselves to the situation without taking action to change our situation or our mental state, the other is working with life as it is. Dealing with situations we do not have an