Professional, Amateur, Hobbyist?

[Neve]

I've just voted Enthusiast/Hobbyist as this is certainly true to date however changes are in the wind I hope. I took early retirement due to my husband's poor health at the time a few years ago and am self-taught re PC, Internet, graphic design using PSP3 shareware version through to 8.01. The past few years have been fulfilling, challenging and always enjoyable. With encouragement from family and friends I'm now trying to venture, on a part-time basis, into photo restoration etc. I'm a long way off from feeling confident about it but certainly I'll give it my best shot. I've designed and printed my own bus cards, also an A4 sized ad which local (friends) shopkeepers have offered to display. Fortunately I already have my own website and have now incorporated a new section into it advertising for restoration work. I decided definitely not to tackle my own printing and have been trialing other sources instead.

I'm very grateful to this site and all contributors far more than I can say.

[andrea31419]

Hi, I'm also new to this site and ametuer. Dabbling in photography with touchups and digital art, mostly of kids and youth sports. Working on starting a part-time business, but I'm now in the process of getting a website put together along with brochures etc...

I've got a website I've done of for our scuba club www.savannahscuba.net, but now am venturing to topside photography, but still working on my underwater photography.

Andrea
Sav.GA.

[Mark Adams]

Okay, here you go -- once again you will have the opportunity to learn more about me than you ever wanted. Feel free to not read any more than you want to read.

I quit playing football my senior year in HS. I committed to playing because it was fun. It stopped being fun, I stopped playing. Besides I was an aspiring musician (HA!) and had plenty of other stuff to do. Of course this left me with my last class period (formerly Athletics) open. I wound up a photographer on the Annual Staff. We had cameras, a darkroom, chemicals, the whole nine yeards. I really enjoyed it.

Photography was something of an artistic outlet for me. Now, I have always had problems just writing my name, so drawing/painting was out of the question. But I had a girlfriend for several years whose mother was a serious artist (painter mostly). We would talk about her work as it progressed and it seemed really interesting. Photography allowed me to do some of the things she was doing; photography was an artful endeavor for somone who can't draw.

I saved my money and bought a Pentax ME Super and some lenses, along with a lot of other equipment and squeezed a couple of photo classes around my music curriculuum in college and really enjoyed them. I then started working, took up golf and let photog. fall by the wayside. Later, I got a computer for wordprocessing in grad. school and started learning a lot about computers.

Now I have kids and take really bad 35mm pics of them. My endeavors with R&R mostly involve trying to improve my seriously rusty skills with a camera. But I've also learned that I can create seriously cool looking stuff with this software! It's exciting. I guess that makes me an "enthusiast".

[v.bampton]

Oh, it's interesting reading about how everyone spends their time. It's lovely to see so many people doing retouching and restoration for the fun of it.

I'm fortunate enough to work all day every day using Photoshop (CS), doing something that I love! We have a photographic studio (family business) doing mainly weddings and portraits, and I've spent the last 5 years bringing the business into the digital arena. We finally went fully digital in January, which has tripled my workload. I now spend most of my time doing all the processing on all the digital files, as well as the retouching and more detailed manipulation. Restorations are a bit of light relief!

I wish there was more Photoshop training at a pro level in the UK. There's an odd few seminars around, but they cover familiar stuff. Some decent training courses would be a major bonus. Many pro photographers went digital, and are now reverting to film, because they just don't have the training to be able to do it properly, and don't want to spend their time sat behind a PC screen.

[camexpatu]

Hi all.

I worked at photopages for 2 years. ( The NZ firm that restores for walgreens ).

I restored photos there for over a year at a rate of about 15 images a day
( what the company required to be profitable ), and was promoted to a supervisor / trainer / quality control role.

I was made redundant from my supervisor role about 6 months ago, as they decided to try and automate the work that I did to cut costs.

I found this site when I was searching for photo restoration companies, as I am thinking about setting up my own business and doing it properly.

[Jenni]

Just found this board, I call myself a hobbiest at the moment. In January I am hoping to get back to school and have been looking into web graphics. I love taking photos and I love fixing them and changing them in photoshop. I have never been paid for my work, but my favorite thing to do is restoration. I have a picture from the late 30's of my father, I restored it (not as well as some I've seen on here) but it looks so much better than it did! As soon as I can I will post it in the gallery to get some fellow members opinons!

[Janet Petty]

Welcome Jenni. Nice to have you around. I hope you enjoy this site and the hard work the moderators and "janitor" put into it. Of course, it is enhanced by the wonderful work/playing around the rest of us do. It is a wonderful place to meet and greet others with the same photo passions.

Janet

[jayk2]

I'm a professional photographer that's just started taking interest in color correcting my photos. It's CRAZY at how difficult this is! for a while I was happy to just give them stuff right off the camera onto a cd, now I want to make sure it's acurate and I spend more time in ps then I do shooting them!

But I enjoy it. Never in a million years did I think I'd be able to work my way around photoshop, now I'm pretty good at it!

[Jin]

Hi,

I checked Professional because I teach Corel Painter classes, though before retiring I worked as an illustrator, graphic artist, and technical writer.

I use both Photoshop and Painter, but Painter's my love. I use almost all of Painter's features in all kinds of ways, including an occasional bit of photo or image retouching, enhancement, manipulation, and collage.

If you don't know what it is, Corel Painter is a Natural Media® software most well known for it's advanced brush technology. It provides drawing and painting tools that simullate traditional media oils, watercolor, chalk, charcoal, pastels, pens, pencils, and more.

Among it's favorites, Painter IX includes the new Artist's Oils brushes and greatly improved Digital Watercolors, just lovely to use. Earlier versions (as well as Painter IX) also include Digital Watercolors, Liquid Ink, Impasto, and many other brush categories, too numerous to list here. A listing of all brush categories and brush variants included in Painter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, 8, and Painter IX can be seen on the site linked below:

Atelier dddo

Corel Painter, among it's other capabilities, is used for fine art painting, image manipulation, web graphics, photo retouching, turning photos into paintings, animation, textures for 3D and other art, post rendering of 3D work, text treatments, mosaics, kaleidoscopes, and more.

So, I guess one could say I'm a professional mixed bag.

[bogart]

I'm a complete novice! Just starting to get involved with photography and retouching. Love the site!

[Lasse]

im on my way into the photographpy buisness. i shoot all kinds of stuff. i do some retouch, but havent done any restorrations jet.

But i also just found the site so ill ´proberply learn alot of restorrations.

/Lasse

[zip022]

After seeing this post I thought perhaps someone might give me advice. I live in a very small area that consists of tourists and families. We have an amazing 7 veterinary clinics and I would like to start a pet photography business. I want to only do painting; watercolor, impressionist etc. on a part time basis. Offer sittings, but also offer work to existing pictures. One of my best friends is the valleys best portrait photog...so it all looks possible for me. Any advice on fees, getting started, etc.

[swanseamale47]

I'm not a professional retoucher, but I am a pro photographer, and I'm getting more and more requests for retouching work, the usual things, uncle Georges wartime pic etc, etc.
I now find more of my time is being spent in the office on the PC, than actually shooting (not sure I like that?) it's reaching the point where I'm going to have to seriously consider reducing the number of weddings that we take on (I only have a small staff) to have the time to do all the post production, and retouching work. Wayne

[photony]

I'm a professional photographer, but get the control I want on my images via careful lighting and camera control, then the final work in Photoshop.

[www.retouch.ca]

Hi Gang:

I am new to this site, but I have been retouching for over 20 years. I guess I would be considered a 'high-end' retoucher. If anyone is interested in my work, feel free to have a look! Enjoy.

http://www.retouch.ca

Glenn