The Evolution of a Retoucher

How does one become a skilled image editor (retoucher/editor)?

For me, there was an evolution. The so-called learning curve that all photographers (in this digital age) must progress, to some degree or another.

Most of us start out with a book…Most of the time, its a waste of time.
How are we supposed to know what to look for? How do we know we are being taught what we want to learn?

Ah…Tutorials!
Every retoucher goes through this stage. It’s where we scour the internet and the book shelves looking for that ONE tutorial to solve all of our problems!
“Found it!….problem solved…”
“But wait…my image doesn’t look like the one in the book! What do I do now?”
What most people don’t realize is those tutorials/books are written with very specific examples, that tend to work wonders on the image used in the tutorial, but the steps outlined have little or no application to what you want to work on.

Back to scouring the internet.

It finally dawns upon us…
“hey, Maybe if I try this part of that technique, and combine it with that….”
“EUREKA!!!”
Now we are solving our own problems.

ah… but we find that it takes a loooooong time to retouch those 20 images we promised that young model from Model Mayhem.
“There has to be a quicker way!”

This is the dreaded BLUR stage. This stage includes such catastrophes as:
Third party actions
Third party plugins
and Skin Blurring

This stage isn’t all bad, but most people never progress beyond this stage.
It’s a necessary step if for nothing else to learn what NOT to do.
Too impatient to take the time to do things properly, we look for ways to just make post-production go as fast as possible, with “ok” results.
We get stuck in the swamp of mediocrity. Reinforced by the positive comments of the ill informed around us.
But if we can climb out the other side, we not only have an eye for the good, but we can definitely spot the bad!

“but how do we get to the otherside?”
First…comes patience…
Then…

We practice.
practice….
and
practice….

Only with practice do we learn,
Only with practice do we get faster,
Only with practice does our work get better…

“That’s funny…I’ve heard that somewhere before”

Only with practice can we get to a point where retouching/editing is just another step in the process.
No different than setting up a backdrop, booking a model, or finding the perfect location.

Only then does post-production become a tool to enhance our work.

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I’ve been retouching for the better part of 7 years…. and just to prove I’m not blowing smoke…I’ve posted a gallery of my “evolution”.

The evolution never stops…there is always something new to discover.
I strive each and every day to be better and more efficient at what I do…

Don’t settle.

The Re-Edit (May), Stephanie

Yeah I know… “What happened to April?”

I have no idea… but its May, and it would be silly to do a re-edit and title it April now wouldn’t it?

This time around I am fortunate to have some old school stuff I thought was lost forever!
You know how hard drive crashes go…
But recently a buddy of mine hooked me up and got one of my trashed HDD’s working again, so I chose an old New York shoot for this months Re-Edit Project.

Stephanie

Stephanie was awesome! She was one cool chick, laid back, and up for virtually anything.
Unfortunately she hadn’t done a whole lot of “Testing”, for all tense and purposes she was a new model. You see she was on a TV show called Make Me a Supermodel and hadn’t done much modeling before the show (they had just wrapped the last show a week before this shoot). She didn’t win, but ended up signing with New York Models anyway.
So she comes out to our test with nothing really. No “model bag” of clothes, makeup, nothing, just strolls in with her purse. It was funny because I remember saying to her…”well, I don’t think I would change what you are wearing anyway!”. In her defense tho, she did have a paid gig scheduled after our test, which didn’t require her to bring anything.

We shot for an hour or so in the stairwell of a friend’s apartment building. We got some amazing stuff…simple…yet amazing.
Original Edit

Once again I recommend clicking the “Vimeo” button and viewing the full screen HD version.

Looking back at these images, I once again found more that I liked the second time around. Obviously my tastes are changing somewhat, but one thing stands out to me. I was consciously or unconsciously composing my images in these weird ways, and throwing the focus off here and there (ok.. the focus thing is bullshit), but what I found was images I had marked as throwaways are now grabbing my attention as visually pleasing pieces.

I think of all the little projects I do, the Re-Edits are the most fun, because I am able to simultaneously see my past “vision” and also see what I captured…but didn’t SEE the first time!

Here I go again…[RANT]

So my triumphant return to blogging was to begin with a cheery little piece on what I’m reading now.

However…

I feel compelled to share this little story/rant with all of you…

So here is a little back story…
I’ve been setting up a very cool fashion project with my buddy Greg Noblin. We’ve been working on this for a few weeks now… I have assembled a great team that is on their shit, and everything is going swimmingly.
Time to pick a model…
I go through the local agencies websites, and pick 4 girls that I like in particular (all from different agencies). I send the images to my team so we can vote on who the star will be.
After a couple of days of deliberating we decide.

So today I contact this model’s agency to give them a run down on the project and check her availability for the proposed shoot date. Note: I have worked with this agency before, I have tested their models, and have been PAID by the models at the agencies request to test them (even tho the owner requested a “cut” to encourage bookings).

I receive this (in so many words…) in response:

“Thanks rich please go ahead and submit a client inquiry via the website. Well need all info and certainly talent info in order to approve the shoot. She’ll of course have to approve talent and concept as well. Lastly if this gets published can we have an agreement to have (MODEL) and (AGENCY)’s name placed in the editorial. Finally we charge $25 flat booking fee to arrange the shoot. Thanks for thinking of (AGENCY) and (MODEL).”

Now… To me that reads one of 2 ways…

1: Thanks, but we don’t like your work, and don’t trust that its going to be worth the models time to shoot with you.

or

2: Thanks, we have no intention of sending the model to you*, but lets see if you are dumb enough to throw us $25 dollars just for shits and giggles.

*I had mentioned possibly booking a shoot to said model (just in passing on FB prior to emailing her booker), and she said she was already booked the day I requested her for*

Option one… not a problem… just tell me. I’ve been out of the game for a bit, and wouldn’t hold it against them.
Option two… (The most likely) is just pathetic…

Rather than blow my top through email, and torch a bridge…(kind of pointless now isn’t it…) I responded with a simple…

“Nevermind then…”

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What gets me about this whole thing is that I was working with agencies and testing models before this “agency” even popped up. I have tested models, and shot girls for editorials for years both here and in NY, and NEVER EVER was I asked to give references for my team, or worse of all…Pay a fucking “booking fee”!

*Lighting the Molotov*

Its fine… believe it or not, I work with other agencies in the city that don’t charge me to shoot their models, nor question whom I work with, and in fact encourage me to shoot their models. OH! did I mention that these other agencies are national agencies? No? hmmm…

*Tosses Molotov*

I may not be the top dog in town, or even the little dog that stays on the porch, but I’ve been around the block once or twice… And the way this “Agency” runs their ship…(based on this little interaction) is just sad.
It just goes to show how desperate some people are in this city that they’ll cannibalize their own industry for a buck.

This “agency” has some good models, and great people that they represent, but from now on (here in Atlanta) I will be sticking with the agencies that were instrumental in my growth as a fashion photographer.

The REAL agencies.

*Glass Shatters!*

Old School

The other day, while rummaging around the garage, I found an old hard drive.
No labels, no writing, no cords or cables.
Having no faith that it would work at all, I took it to my room. Miraculously I found a USB cable to fit it (one of those square’ish connections…(no doubt pre-USB 2.0). I also lucked out that the power cord from another drive happened to fit. I clicked it on, let it get up to speed, plugged it into the laptop, and now the fingers are crossed.

Believe it or not, it mounted. The hopeful orange icon, “untitled”, now sat on my desktop.

One click in, I see a single folder… labeled “Fotos”. I stop there and fire up Adobe Lightroom. LR does it’s thing, and I see that there are 11,443 images. Not bad. The Drive has images ranging from as early as March 2004, to November ’06. It’s literally all “old school” images.

Seeing all these images, some that I haven’t looked at since first putting them on this drive is really fantastic. It’s like looking through an old family album, it’s virtually the same thing I know, but its different because it’s all Me. I had the concepts, did the production, shot the images, and did the post work. I get flashbacks of all of that, while looking through this “time capsule”.

My question is… How often do you go back to old stuff? I mean waaaaaay back even to the beginning.
I know 6 years isn’t really that long ago, but to me it seems like an eternity. When you get a chance…dig up an old hard drive, portfolio, or box of slides and see how far you’ve come.

Insight #1

I’m going for something a little more educational today… so bear with me

I get questions all the time (particularly on Model Mayhem) about how certain shots are done. The people who know me understand that I typically respond one of two ways.

1.) Get excited, and ramble endlessly about the technical aspects of a shot.
2.) Scoff and make a comment about “why don’t you learn it yourself”

My friends usually receive reaction number 1. Strangers… number 2.

But in the spirit of Create-Share-Sustain I thought I would start paying it forward.
So here it is… Insight #1

The shot is pretty straight forward. The biggest asset is the model, Alexa Johns (Factor ATL), This lighting won’t work on everyone because it accentuates bone structure. People ask me “what does a beauty dish do?”. Instead of giving a long physics explanation (complete with a ray tracing diagram), I offer this. It makes the beautiful… beautiful, and the ugly… ugly, by enhancing contours of the face and body. If you’ve got a model with a round chubby face, it’s going to look even more round and chubby with a beauty dish. Combine that with an edge light on Alexa’s jaw from the background and we’ve got a stark contrasty image that is anchored by the beauty of the model.
As far as post goes…not a lot went into this. I did darken the shadow on her face a tad, but other than taking out a pore or two what you see is what I shot.
Shot on a Canon 5d, 1/125 @f9, ISO 100.

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Looking back (since this blog is about my self-discovery and all), I’ve always been pretty open with what I do.  In school I’d always shoot with the studio doors open, and there was always an open invitation to come hang out at my shoots.  It may have been that there wasn’t anyone else (in school) shooting fashion at the time (maybe 2 others), and we were buddies that shot together anyway.  So I never really felt competitive to the point of keeping things to myself.  Out in the “real” world it seems a bit different.  There is a hesitation to share what you know because you are ultimately competing with everyone for income.

I think now, I’m to the point where if someone wants to copy what I do, or learn what I do, I hope they use it in their own unique way. I’m not so much concerned with someone doing it better than I can,  if someone does it better, that’s going to make me push harder.  But learning new techniques from someone, either via tutorial, or assisting on set, I think you owe it to yourself to use it in your own unique way.  Otherwise, you will always be starting from the disadvantage of having something to live up to, instead of breaking new ground.

Being unique is what makes an artist marketable, not technique.

Freedom

At what point in your life does one decide who they are going to be?

I believe it’s when you find what you want most, and resolve to not let anything keep you from it. I think it takes a willingness to fail, but that also requires a passion for what you are doing.
For me, making images of tabletop products is boring, I have no passion for it, so how could I ever be willing to take a risk and fail so that I may improve? I don’t think it can be done.

For the longest time I have looked to others for approval, and sought out justification for the work I was producing.
I was shooting for other people.
I realized, not too long ago in fact, that I didn’t know who I was as a an artist.
Sure I have developed a style, but it’s not really mine. It is easy to see that I got much of my inspiration from other photographers like ishi and Mark Squires.
So I’ve been asking myself…”who am I?” and “What do I want to shoot”

The bottom line is… I’m still not sure, but I can feel my mind opening up to all sorts of possibilities. I now have whims of inspiration that aren’t even close to what I would “typically” shoot. It’s exciting, because I feel I’m getting to the point emotionally that I can create and work without thought or care to what others may think, and just let it take care of itself. Looking out for numero uno for once.

Who do you shoot for?

One of the Goals I set for myself is to “Lose my inhibitions”….
I think I’m getting there…I’m almost free!

Flickr

So in following many many photographers on Twitter, I have noticed quite a few utilize flickr as a place to show off work.  My archaic thinking led be to believe that you should only post the good stuff, and it should be on your website.
Suffice to say, my point of view has changed.
In my efforts to become more visible to the world, I have to take every opportunity to share what I’m doing/done as much as I can (without being annoying). So I’ve created a flickr account to post (for the time being) images that just don’t belong anywhere…yet.
I could have easily put them here, but I think this blog has enough randomness to it already, and a simple link to my “photostream” should be just fine.

My flickr photostream

There isn’t much there right now, but as I get familiar with the site, and cruise through the archives a little more, there should be plenty of random images that I think are cool, but just don’t fit.
If you are on flickr hit me up!

one last…

Here is my first attempt at a video… well, its more of a glorified slide show… but hey.. gotta start somewhere…
(btw, this isn’t the aforementioned “video project” I’ve been working on)

FYI the video looks like crap because for some reason I cannot embed this directly from Animoto (the place that put the video together).
I had to export it to YouTube, which re-encodes the video…aka makes it look like dog shit.
UPDATE: Thanks to the wordpress peeps, I’ve been made aware of a new way to embed my videos…Not sure if the quality is any better, but at least the links in the original video are active “except full screen”
Here is the link to the Animoto master (which looks WAAAAY better): one last…

more about "one last…", posted with vodpod

Ya know, for a down and dirty, free, semi-automated process, I think this turned out ok.
What do you think?

light the way

©2010 Rich Meade

The Re-Edit

One of the goals I have set for myself is to “Re-Edit” one shoot every month. In other words, go back, re-evaluate, and pick my favorites again. The idea being to see how my perception, style, and or tastes have changed over time.
The guinea pig for this experiment is a shoot I did while in grad school.
I had bought an old Olympus Pen FT on eBay, with the hopes of shooting with this unique camera (and film), it might lead to a more artistic output. If you aren’t familiar with the Pen F camera, you’ll find it’s quite unique. The camera itself is a compact 35mm film camera from the 60′s. Standard bayonet mount and manual focus lenses, along with manual film advancement. So far its just your basic compact camera right? Well wrong! The Pen F was unique in that it utilized only half of the 35mm frame! Effectively giving you 72 shots on a typical 36 exposure roll of film (give or take a couple). You can read more about it here.

My thinking was…”If I can shoot a super fast (grainy) film, of my typical subject matter, it has to come out as art!”
So I attached a cheap flash, hired a model (whom is a dear friend), and went to work.
The results…at the time, were the complete opposite of my normal style, and output. I thought I had finally produced something that would be “acceptable” to the artsy fartsy faculty and students of my school.
I was wrong.
Frustrated yet again…I archived the images, and forgot about them…that is until today.

I decided to take another look at them. Sure they are grainy as all hell, and scratched to shit (didn’t take the best care of the negatives when scanning them), but there was something I liked about them. They felt…honest, at least more honest than the usual fashion/nude work I have done in the past. It wasn’t for lack of makeup (or stylish shoes), but was the quality…rather lack thereof…that struck me as being more truthful. It was a half-assed effort, at the time of creation, which comes through even now, but that is what is endearing about the images.

A new perspective, and a little bit of editing, have made these images worth looking at…for me at least. The process of rehashing this shoot has also inspired me to break out the old Pen F, and do some more. If nothing else…that makes this exercise worth while.