Professional retoucher Daniel Meadows shares insights in professional retouching, how he learned retouching with the help of browsing forums, and how to work with advertising agencies.
D Meadows Design (DMD) became what is now Daniel Meadows – High-End Photo Retouching in 2009 and has during that time provided quality commercial retouching services to clients from aspiring beauty, fashion and editorial photographers to some of the world’s biggest names in fashion, consumer goods, and cosmetics.
In that time I’ve worked remotely and onsite for household names on projects from portfolios to 100m2 billboards, all the time keeping abreast of industry developments in style and technique.
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subscribe in your favorite podcasting app Spotify | Retouching is our passion! We love talking about techniques, tools, gear, the business of retouching and to totally nerd out on it. As photographers go on meetups and conventions to talk about lights and cameras, we retouchers often have no opportunity to get together and to talk. For that reason, we would love to start discussions and invite other retouchers to talk about our interests, our business
Daniel has been retouching now for quite some years. In this podcast, we even joke about the good old times, when internet forums were still a thing.
Daniel mentioned, how he spent time browsing forums to find information on how professional retouching was done.
Beleive it or not, back then, information was not as widely available as it is in today’s internet world. People used not to share a lot of information. Today everyone seems to be spoonfed with information. That said, information was available to those who were eager to dedicate themselves to the craft and who were willing to dig through forum posts.
Daniel mentions, how connections were made in such forums, the way people shared information, and how he ultimately acquired a lot of knowledge on retouching. Said knowledge he could later use to build his retouching career
For Daniel, retouching was not a career he intended to pursue initially. He had followed a business endeavor with a partner, running a coffee shop. Ultimately, this business failed for a bunch of reasons, and Daniel found himself in a situation where he had to figure out a way to make a living.
Daniel explains the difficult situation and how frustrating it was. He even dealt with the desition to stock shelves in a supermarket just to get by. Luckily, some friends advised him otherwise, telling him they were convinced he could do much better than that.
And so, he ultimately ended up with the retouching thing that he did for fun up until this time of his life.
In this episode, Daniel Meadows talks about how he ended up with his first client. He mentions how he was entrusted with a job that actually was way over his head, but somehow, this client saw the quality of work that he could deliver and therefore trusted in him and for him to deliver on his promises. And so Daniel had to pull through and work his way through the first job. All of this gave him the confidence that he could pursue retouching as a job and make a living with it.
Fake it ’til you make it
Daniel and I talk about which jobs in retouching actually can earn you an income. While editorials are great to work on in terms of creative input and fulfillment, more often than not, they don’t pay enough to sustain a regular income stream. Daniel used to be living in Manchester (UK) where he established himself as a freelance retoucher working for local advertising agencies.
Truth be told, when you want to make a good income, advertising is where it is at. To be successful, you will have to go into agencies, talk to people and get your foot in the door to eventually get a chance.
As you can imagine, two cat-owners sitting down for a talk does not come without interruptions. So, we had quite some interruptions to endure. But we are taking it like real cat-owners, with a laugh!
Daniel was gracious enough to send over an image of his cat Bastet, chilling beneath the heat-lamp Daniel regularly puts up for her.
