PIX : So tell me about yourself. I'm curious how you find yourself as a retoucher. Did you start out with that in mind or did you fall into it ?
JEREMEY : I have to admit that I completely fell into it. Before a few years ago, as a musician, all I knew of photoshop was that you could design cd covers and flyers with it. In 2003, I moved to Los Angeles with my life in a bit of crisis mode and took a pretty unpleasant retail job at a packing/shipping place, in Silverlake.
While I was there, I developed a really good relationship with a few people who worked for a pretty successful headshot photographer named Kevyn Major Howard. When they found out that I was planning to quit the shipping job, the whole group of them came in and asked if I was interested in working with them. I asked what exactly they were looking for and was told that I would be doing general office tasks like sorting and organizing files, plus some invoicing.
I think it was on my second day that the woman who ran the print department started teaching me the basics of retouching, and I was instantly hooked. I worked for Kevyn for about a year and then moved to managing a lab called Pixels, a sort of a sister business started by Kevyn's sister-in-law. After being at Pixels for about 6 months, I began to realize that I had a real passion for retouching, but not so much for printing or for running a lab day to day.
It was exactly at that time that I was introduced to Daniel Kopton, who runs a retouching business called Danklife. We met through a friend of a friend, and he invited me over to see what kind of work he was doing. I was completely blown away. What he was doing was light years beyond any retouching that I had been doing in the headshot world. Daniel agreed to teach me his secrets and give me some freelance jobs, as long as I agreed not to talk back too much. I had some money saved up and knew that I didn't have the time to learn high-end retouching from Daniel and still be at Pixels full time. So, I quit my job and hoped for the best. The transition seems to have been successful. Daniel and I have a really strong working relationship, and I've been with Danklife for 3 years now.
PIX : That's quite a story ! I'm always amazed at how folks trace back how they got to where they are. Many are just a series of job that opens an opportunity and others knew from the beginning what they wanted to do. So with Dankife, who are your clients ? Advertising firms, photographers, others ?
JEREMEY : We actually have a pretty wide variety of clients. We have a list of photographers that we've been working with for years. We also work with several corporate clients, such as Nike, Adidas, Oakley, Activision and REI, to name a few. Some of those clients come to us through our regular photographers, and some, like Nike, work directly with us on a regular basis. Then, we have ongoing relationships with stock agencies like Getty Images, Corbis, Jupiter Media and Blend Images. Jupiter, in particular, has been really good to us for the last couple years. They recommend us as preferred retouchers to the photographers that have contracts with them.
Lately, we've also been expanding into posters and ads for film, television and music. Daniel just finished print ads for the new season of "The Apprentice", which were really cool, and I recently did retouching for a few different musicians, which was a nice way connect retouching to my music background.
PIX : Sounds like y'all are working all the time ! I remember just late last year Getty bought out Jupiter - not sure if anything has been transfer over or not. So sounds like y'all handle a lot of folks. How do folks find out about y'all ? Is it more word-of-mouth or do you folks have a marketing plan ?
JEREMEY : So far we've managed to do a pretty good job getting the Danklife name out strictly through word of mouth and our website. Luckily, photographers are a social bunch and seem to like to spread the word. We have a lot of new clients referred to us by existing clients. I don't think either of us has the stomach or the patience to develop anything which could even remotely be considered a real "marketing plan".
PIX : Lucky y'all :) What's a typical average day for you like ?
JEREMEY : Well, thats sort of the great thing about this job, I don't have an average day. I can guarantee that I spend most of each day in front of my computer. But, that's only real constant. Let's see. I work from home. So, my morning commute is a few seconds walk across the loft, from my bedroom to my office. I wake up around 9 and start working around 10. Usually, the first hour or so is consumed by returning emails and occasionally phone calls to clients. Dan and I communicate through ichat all day. In the mornings we catch up on who is handling which jobs and wether or not any new images have come in. Most clients send everything to us via FTP now, so it's very easy to keep track of the workload. We used to have DVDs and paperwork all over the place. Now it's pretty much all digital. I usually work until about 6, but sometimes later if we're particularly busy.
Somedays I can spend all day working on a single commercial image, or I can work on a half dozen or so portfolio pieces for a photographer, which usually involves sending proofs back and forth all day. Other days, I can just knock out 30-40 stock images. Every so often there really isn't anything to do at all. On those days, we'll catch up on email, news, etc, and then spend the rest of the day trying out new techniques and looks. We have to spend a lot of time researching and experimenting to keep ahead in the retouching game.
We have months, like December, that we spend everyday doing almost nothing but retouching and sleeping. Then, we have months, like January, that tend to be fairly slow. The key for me is to keep the schedule of getting up everyday and working on something, wether we're technically busy or not. Retouching and working from home both require a certain amount of discipline. I've met people who can't handle the combo.
PIX : Hmm...your average day sounds kinda of like mine - don't have a set schedule but as long as I get my work done, it is all good. Any tips for photographers out there who do their own retouching ? And also curious what equipment you use too.
JEREMY : I'd say that photographers should understand that even though retouching is quite often a necessary step in modern photography, that it's a completely different skill set from the art of shooting. Anyone who wants to do their own retouching is going to have to be truly committed to practicing and spending the time needed to develop the skills. Even the very first step, RAW processing, is usually misunderstood by someone who doesn't do retouching daily. Anyone who can't properly process a RAW is pretty much dead in the water. If you don't have the time to really get the techniques down and learn all of the technical aspects involved, you should really hire someone else. Most photographers who do their own retouching discover that they are spending more time in front of a computer and increasingly less time behind a lens. Eventually, they end up losing more money in time and energy than they would spend hiring someone like us.
As far as gear goes, it's really pretty straight forward. I have a dual-core Intel Mac Pro, a Wacom Tablet and two cinema displays. A two monitors set up, is key. The main monitor for the actual image and the other functions as a palette monitor. The main monitor is calibrated weekly. I use Photoshop, of course. Currently, we're using CS4. Unfortunately, it ends up being a necessary evil to buy every upgrade. The one part of "equipment" that people don't usually think about is your actual room or office. We work in complete or at least near-complete darkness. I have all the windows in my office covered with layers of various materials to keep light out while I'm working. Most people think it's a little eerie and depressing, but you really can't accurately judge what your seeing on a screen if it's being flooded by other light sources. It's really funny to watch clients walk into one of our studios from outside and stumble about in the darkness trying to adjust their eyes while it's completely natural to us.
PIX : Thanks for the chat. And finally, really quick, any interesting stories or horror stories to tell ? No need to mention any names here...we don't wanna out anyone here, just curious.
JEREMY : Oh man, there are so many stories. Honestly, there is a pretty healthy mix of anecdotes about clients and stories of our own stumbling and lessons learned over the years. I guess I could start with some bits about clients. We have a pretty common problem with photographers viewing our work on monitors that aren't calibrated in sunlit rooms and then militantly arguing with us about color. That is always infuriating until we convince them to calibrate. We have had huge jobs of over 1000 images given to us to begin retouching days after the deadline had passed for the job to be completely and delivered to the agency. Somehow, we were blamed for that by the photographer. We have had photographers ship us unlabeled hard drives of entire shoots and expect us to sort through thousands of RAW files to find the 30 images that have been selected for retouching. We once had a top art director from a corporate client fly into LA to meet with us and see our "office" only to discover Daniel and I set up in an upstairs bedroom of his townhouse in Silverlake. We thought that one was going to turn out badly, but he was actually impressed that the two of us could handle the whole job and we ended up having really a good time with him.
Then, there are the maybe even more horrifying stories of our own miss steps. The first that comes to my mind was the second job I did for Danklife. It was the first time Daniel gave me over 100 images to do on my own. The job took me a week, as I was still new and slow. I think I gave it to him two days before the deadline so that he could check it for quality control before shipping it out. Well, this goes back to my RAW processing warnings! I made a very bad, rookie mistake in RAW processing and ended up needing to start the whole job over and do it in less than 24 hours. Lots of coffee and a sleepless night later, the mistake was corrected by the deadline. I learned a valuable lesson and have never made an error that dumb again.
Finally, a couple summers ago Daniel decided that we should set up a "real" office and bring all the freelancers under one roof. If only I could accurately explain the hilarity that ensued. We quickly realized that a bunch of retouchers working in the same room is completely unnecessary, provided not a single benefit to our clients, and was actually pretty damaging to our relationships. About halfway through the summer Daniel began lecturing everyone daily on productivity in a slightly hostile tone while simultaneously sending me ichat message from about 15 feet away telling me to ignore him because it was all just a show for the other retouchers. Eventually, someone was fired and those of that remained were literally kicked out of the office and told to return to working from home before we all hated each other. Usually, I am not allowed to remind anyone about this period in Danklife history.
PIX : LOL ! Thanks Jeremy, I'll let you get back to your batcave :)
danklife.com
