One of the best features of working freelance is being able to pick the co-workers. While most of my models are local friends, all but one of my retouchers live elsewhere. Tiffany is the one local colleague. We go back quite a few years when I was teaching multimedia production courses at IADT college. Back then, she was a straight A student, serious and well organized. Since then, she’s retouched images, trained and managed other retouchers, and assisted on photo shoots. It’s great to be able to hand her a task and know that it would be done on time, well and usually better than expected.
Here’s an example of her work (click for details). Pretty much all close-up photos require retouching, sometime for manufacturing flaws and always for dust and other contaminants. Much of these details are invisible to unaided eye but manifest themselves readily in 10 by 15 foot trade show prints.
It also helps that she’s former Army and current firearm enthusiast. She understands the terminology and can set up props correctly.
While some employers worry about people coming to the office with a gun one day, I know for a fact that all of my collaborators carry, and usually have a rifle with a vest in the trunk as well. To me, that’s a plus.
She’s helped me test fire a wide variety of weapons, often being the first person after the inventor or the designer to run a particular new loudboomer.
We even share the penchant for redundant targeting options, in this case, iron sights, Lucid HD7 red dot and Viridian C5R laser.
Since working with me takes up only about a third of her time, I’d like to recommend Tiffany as an excellent retoucher and graphic designer. She has worked directly for several of my clients and everyone was quite happy with the results and the reliability. She may be reached at tmreynolds9@gmail.com
