[1STLITE]

Well, here I am. I have been an a mom now for 3 1/2 years and an at home mom since Aug. 2002. I have always been "artsty". Liked to draw and stuff when I was in grade school, and in high school had my first "art" class. Decided to enter a jr. college studying fine arts. Didn't finish (we all make mistakes). Now here I am 26 years old have a 3.5 year old girl and a 6 month old baby boy. And if it were not for my computer and Photoshop CS (birthday peesent from my hubby and mom and sisters this April, before that it was Arcsoft Photompression and then Photoshop Elements) I would absolutely go insane - lol. I love family history (though I never did well in history class - lol). I want to make my way to being able to make a little money to help out with the house bills and spending money here and there, and I like the idea that I can make people happy and help them preserve their history and make money doing what I LOVE!!

AND - I absolutely LOVE Retouch Pro, and vow to do what I can to help support the site (when I can afford it monetarilty and when I can't morally - lol). YOU all are MY school!! Thank you all so much for sharing your vast knowledge with me and everyone else who is fortunate to find their way to this wonderful site!!

Dawn

[DannyRaphael]

Hi Dawn:

Wonderful intro and welcome aboard.

I can understand the need for a creative outlet. As much as I totally love our kids (now 8 and 6), when they were a younger and needed more TLC more often, I relished the hours late a night when it was time for me to play.

It's always nice to have the RetouchPro family grow by one. Glad you found us.

~DannyR~

[Chip Hildreth]

This has been fun to read; makes things a little more personal. For my part...

I grew up in Birmingham Alabama during the 60's. My father was a serious amateur photographer who shot some photos of B-17's while he was a tail gunner in the US 8th Air Force. Several of them have since been widely published. He taught and encouraged me to use his spare Leica rangefinder camera. Somewhere between the age 7 and 10, I bought a Polaroid Swinger camera at a neighborhood yard sale and took pictures of my dogs and some embarrassing pictures of my big sister.
As a teenager I got into rock climbing and then whitewater kayaking and bought a series of SLR's to shoot action. Galen Rowell was emerging as a premiere outdoor photographer and was a major influence on my shooting.
A photojournalist with the Birmingham News noticed some of my stuff and put me to work shooting sports and publicity events... mostly football, moto-cross, tennis and golf but there were some rodeos, a ballon race, kids BMX and other more or less esoteric events. For three years I burned a lot of film and made almost no money. I supported myself by working in a backpacking shop, a veteranary clinic and assisting a commercial product photographer. My laundry room doubled as a B&W darkroom.
I later got a real job in field engineering and traveled to communications sites all over the eastern US including all the NASA centers where I shot all sorts of aircraft and satellite systems in pretty interesting settings... lots of B&W time exposures at night with star filters and lots of lights.
In 1987 I got married, moved to NC, started a business installing computer networks and left my photo equipment in the closet until 1995 when my first kid arrived. I have never had a video camera but I've got enough shots of my kids (the second one came in 1998) to make a full motion video of them growing up.
Becoming a dad changed my perspective quite a bit and after closing my business, losing my marriage and working a high pressure director's job with non-profit NGO, I opened and new business, partnering with a graphic designer. We do what we refer to as 'Creative Services', that is, we design and print highly customized stuff like artistic logos and 'looks', supercool color business cards, gift cards, magazine ads, collectable performance and festival posters and large graphic displays for exhibits and trade shows. We just finished our biggest project so far... for Duke University Health System it's a 20' long, 5' high timeline exhibit containing over a hundred photos.
As time passed, we learned that we are well equipped to digitize just about any image on film or paper, regardless of size. This led us into fine art reproduction and photo restoration.
That is how I came to find RetouchPro; it's the only online community I've ever been compelled to participate in because, for the most part, there are no big egos dominating everything. RetouchPRO is a genuine community of people who just plain ENJOY helping other people and learning from one another. It really turns me on to see such incredible skill in action simply for the good of others. It's interesting how it's the serious amateurs who seem to possess the greatest body of talent and knowledge. I had to go out and buy Katrin Eismann's Restoration and Retouching book just to see why it is recommended so often here. Now I know, it's everything people say and more; probably the only technique book, on any subject, in which I've ever gone cover to cover.

In final summary, I'm a gloating father of a really cool, sensitive, 9-year old boy and reallyprecious, bright, 6-year old girl. They both facinate me and influence my every waking moment. I never tire of their presence, their questions, their needs or their shenanigans. They are why I live.
I am broke, tired and happy as can possibly be. I live in a house in the woods and drive six miles of country roads to my office in a small, historic, colonial town where everybody knows everybody. I shoot and process pictures with film and digital cameras from 35mm to 4x5, work with images and graphics of all types, make beautifully designed prints and craft all sorts of ways to display them. I work with artists, art directors, curators and other creative professionals. My girlfreind, art director, business partner and future wife is more wonderful than I ever dreamed I would deserve. LIFE IS GOOD.

...did I mention my kids?

[Kissed Vixen]

Hi, I have been on this board for a while now, but some how managed to miss this introduction thread. So I decided to have fun with this... so I grabbed the description of my sign from my fav astrology dude http://cainer.com and thought I would use that to compare.

"Sagittarians aren't interested in being 'understood'. Most of them are far too busy for introversion. They are easy to please if you've got a dragon to slay or a mountain that needs climbing - but they aren't too fond of the quiet life. When bored, they tend to invent challenges. What they lack in caution, tact and reserve, Sagittarians make up for in enthusiasm, honesty and buoyancy. They take their luck for granted and push it to the limit. Annoyingly, they get away with it. There will always be 'close scrapes' and 'near misses' but things have this uncanny way of working out alright in the end for Sagittarians."

Basically I would say yes that’s me I have chosen to live my life, my way, even if it means I might make things a bit harder on myself, it also can be more interesting..
I love to challenge myself, but less in the physical and more in the learning, and creative aspects of life. It also has been notated over the years that yes I do seem to have a horse shoe inserted somewhere in my anatomy since I am pretty lucky and do get away with a lot

and the working out in the end... well so far so good, guess we will have to see about that one later!

My challenges of late, are all on the computer. Having never taken a course of any kind in computing I taught my self how to build a computer and fix the little weirdness that can arise. I taught myself html encoding and once I discovered digital editing, altering, playing. I was hooked! I am all about the visual and mixing audio and visual elements. Sp computers are amazing to me!!
My background is performance artist, makeup artist, event organizer and now Digital Artist/Editor

So that’s me, the happy bouncy blue haired Canadian chick
And Thanks so much for this site!! And the Challenges within!

Kissed aka CoZmA

[DannyRaphael]

Kissed V and Chip:

You feel just like family! Thanks for letting us get to know each of you better.

~Danny~

[PixelHawk]

This looks like as good a place to start as any...

Hi, my name is Keri and I'm a Photoshop addict.

I stumbled across a link to this site in the NAPP forum yesterday, and I liked what I saw. I've started to go through some of the posts, the tutorials, challenges, etc. and there looks to be quite a few things I want to play in (if I can make the time!)

Little bit about me:

Even as a kid I was always fascinated with photo retouching. Of course back then it was done with airbrushing. While I started airbrushing at age 10, I never felt confident enough to actually do it to a photograph... after all, personal computers were a nonexistent thing, let alone the ability to duplicate photographs easily and cheaply.

From 1989 to 1992 I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco where I majored in Graphic Design. This was when 'old school' methods of design were still dominant, but the digital age was approaching and threatening to make all the ones who refused to grow with the technology obsolete. I was introduced to Photoshop (version 1.0!) in my Advanced Desktop Publishing class, and the first thing I did to the photograph the teacher gave us was start to retouch it! I've been hooked ever since.

Since I graduated, I have worked mainly in the publishing industry. My first job was at a publising company that specialized in craft magazines, and had just started on a vegetarian magazine that launched shortly after I started there. I helped them grow into the digital age, and gradually began to take over much of their digital imaging work, rather than trust it to outside sources. We did our scanning in-house too at one point. Wherever I went, I would end up carving out a position that would entail a lot of Photoshop work. My last publishing job lasted a bit over 4 years, and I ended up getting to do some really challenging retouch work there. I still do some freelance work for them from time to time.

Now I teach graphic design courses at a vocational college. Currently I am teaching a Photoshop class. It is fun to pass the enthusiasm on to other people.

Other than that, I've been trying to expand my knowledge into things like comic book style rendering, special effects and digital compositions.

Didn't mean to write a book, but looks like I did anyway.

Hi!

[heathrowe]

hello Kerri, welcome aboard - glad you can make it here.
Seem you have some great fundamental retouching skills (old school and new) under your belt.

I also hang out at NAAP forums, again, nice meeting you and will be seeing your around.

happy photoshopping
heathrowe

[DannyRaphael]

Keri:

As a former Californian myself (L.A. area until 1965) let me add my welcome, too. Although there's lots of golden nuggets to be found among the gazillions of challenges and threads, I look forward to reading your words of advice and wisdom based on "old school" knowledge and experiences.

Glad you found us.

~Danny~

[JustChecking]

i'm glad i've found this site, as it looks really interesting (though i've found it just by chance).
i'm 22yo student from czech rep. (it's in central europe), studying computer engineering. gfx has always been my hobby, but more from the programming POV than from the technique-side. it's been only recently (like half a year or so) i started to get more involved in the 2d gfx from the "user" side (hope it's not an insult ).

oh, and sorrry for my lousy english... i know it su*ks...

[DannyRaphael]

Welcome to RetouchPRO, JC.

Your English is just fine... much, much better than my Czech! Glad you found us and I hope you learn a lot.

~Danny~

[wtimmer]

Hi everybody,

Well I happened to stumble across this forum a few days ago and decided it might be fun to join. I have been doing "image enhancement" digitally now for roughly 11 years. I grew up in a photography studio (literally) as my father is and has been a professional portrait photographer for the past 30 some years (and no not at wal-mart) he does wonderful work and I think some of it might have rubbed off on me (even though when I was a teen I would have laughed even at the suggestion that I follow even remotely in my fathers footsteps) Not only is my father a photographer but my mother has been a positive (traditional) retoucher, airbrush artist for the past 25 years. She taught me how to retouch using dyes and pencils on photographs when I was 12. I didn't really begin to realize that I actually had an eye for the business though until I was in college studying Visual Communications at Ferris State University in Michigan. I worked a lot with images and manipulating them to fit into my Ad work and one day I just kind of realized I didn't want to mess with text as much anymore and really wanted to focus on the image enhancement part. I happened to land a job at the photo processing lab my dad sent his work too as a digital artist working the night shift enhancing photographs and burning them back out to film so they could be printed photographically. After 3 or so years I had competed in several Professional Photographers of America competition on both state and national levels and received a few awards (not to mention I did lots and lots of work for photographers that compete as well.... and still do) Currently as with most jobs, I have advanced out of the "retouching" end here at Burrell and have moved into more of a Administration roll, currently I handle all of the production software, workflow and digitized catalogs for Burrell Professional labs network. I manage over 200 pc's running Kodak's DP2 digital print production software and Several dozen pieces of photographic scanning and printing equipment here in Crown Point Indiana. We have 6 facilitys across the united states from california to indiana. And though I don't retouch at Burrell anymore (well occasionally when they absolutely need me to help move some work) I still have trained a good majority of the artists that are currently employed here at the lab as well as a few of the artists at our other facilitys. I also do a lot of Beta-testing of software and equipment (including Digital Cameras) for Kodak, Fuji and a ton of industry specific software developers. As I work full time for Burrell as Production Systems Administrator, I also work part time at home doing image enhancement for a commercial house in Chicago (you may see my work in Bridal magazines) and lastly I did actually vere off my current path and went back to advertising for a year in 2000 where I worked for a commercial house doing image enhancement and layout design for General Motors, Honda, Marlboro, Pilsbury and many many more.

My strong suits are obviously the ins and outs of how programs work (its what I do for a living) I know a lot about Photoshop as I have been using it since roughly 93 v. 2.5.1 I train photographers every day how to calibrate their monitors, use applications specific to "our" industry, how to use their cameras (yes I know that sounds stupid but its oh so true) how to set up lighting, exposure, color balance........... lets just say I know enough to get by when it comes to digital photography.

Me personally? I enjoy working on cars, motorcycles, going to carshows (I am a judge occasionally) I love being outside period. I love fishing, hunting anything to do with the outdoors. I have two dogs a black lab and a yellow lab both of which I take swimming on a weekly basis, as well as 4 cats a tortise and 3 fish tanks. Oh yeah did I mention the wife??? I have been married now for two years and she is my biggest critic (not even joking) if I can make something look good enough for her, then it should be good enough for anybody. (she used to work at Burrell in QC... LOL) I also am a BIG fan of super heavy death metal music (Meshugga, DevilDriver, Slayer etc..) I attend concerts on a monthly basis in Chicago. I also love to enhance images, I love critisism (it only makes you better) and I really love to talk about what I do (obviously if I wrote this book right?) I really am looking forward to doing the challenges and possibly putting some of the ones I thought were particualarly hard up for others to take a crack at. Please anybody that wants to talk about what we do feel free to contact me here or I can be contacted on yahoo messanger as mojo2803 and msn messenger (I only give this one out to work and close friends.... if you make that status i'll add you) but I monitor both all day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST. Or if you just wanna chat, I love making friends and I love helping people if they ask for it.

Can't wait to hear from you guys!

p.s. if you want to check out where I work go to www.burrellprolabs.com

Bill

[DannyRaphael]

Bill:

The diversity of your background and experience is simply awesome, especially your sucessful crossover from traditional methods to digital and PC technology. With all you do and are responsible for professionally, how do you find time for your personal interests?

I look forward to reading your future contributions and insights. It's a privilege to have one as accomplished as you join us.

Welcome aboard.

~Danny~

[wtimmer]

As to your question of having time for "myself"...... I am on call 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, and i'm pretty fast when it comes to "production" retouching so I can generally make time for myself (the faster I work, the more free time I get) and the beauty thing about working for yourself is....... I can turn work away if I need a break and most of the photographers I work with understand I do artwork "part time" and I have a family and a life so if they want my work they get it to me with enough time. That way I don't have to work 10 hours at my job and go home and work another 10 to fulfil their order. (this doesn't always happen..... as a matter of fact it happened this week, but for what I charge per hour I don't mind putting in 20-30 hours extra a week)

Bill

[Lynn]

Up until 2001, my work day involved punching a time clock in a textile mill where I made a decent living, but pretty much hated having to be. Long story short, an on the job injury, a few lawyers, several surgeries and 2 years later found me unable to continue doing what I'd always done for a living. What at the time seemed like a nightmare actually has ended up being a blessing....I was forced out of a job I hated, and given the opportunity to sit back and decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. How many people get that chance?

I went out on a limb and got a good digital camera, held my breath (said a few prayers) and applied for a job at a newspaper and managed to convince them I could do it. And I did it! This is where photoshop comes in...what I couldn't get right, I had to learn how to fix, and in a hurry. After learning to fix (some)color and exposure problems I got interested in the creative end of using photoshop and discovered a whole new world.

I got married this summer, and at the moment have more free time than I have for awhile. I do wedding and freelance photography when I can, and learn a little something every time I pick up my camera. Yes, I am am still on the beginning end of things but my clients are happy and my confidence grows every day. : )

I'm glad to have discovered a place where so many peole bring such a variety of knowledge to the mix.

Lynn

[saby]

Hi All!

my name is Horváth Szabolcs (31 male) live in Hungary Europe
i'am infromation system programmer, i've been working in publishing since '93. First i was DTP opreator at HUNGEXPO AD agency than i got job in a printing house as drum scanner operator now i'm working at the market leader publisher in Hungary (ALEXANDRA) as photo retouching supervisor.
I am very glad to find you and this site.
saby