Here is a quick personal story about a turning point in my life as a professional photographer. It’s about the day that I finally decided to let go of my images and outsource my retouching!

I’ve been shooting weddings for 10 years. After 6 years I finally decided to hand my images over to a professional retoucher and it was one of the best business decisions of my life!

As you know, running a photography business is not easy. It not just about going out there and taking amazing photos, you have to wear many hats to keep your business running. So at the end of the day, you’re not just a photographer, you’re also:

• an admin person
• a marketer
• a sales person
• a bookkeeper / accountant
• a quick thinking problem solver
• a rapport building guru
• a disaster diffuser
• a jack of all trades… and the list goes on

The problem for me was that I was spending 8 – 12 hours retouching each wedding and even though I thought I was pretty good at it; I would always find myself procrastinating. I just couldn’t stay focused. I would retouch for an hour and then find myself wandering around trying to find anything else to do! So one job would blow out for 2 or 3 days.

The bigger problem was that as I got busier, I found myself spending my whole working week retouching. Other tasks that I needed to do to keep my business up and running were being neglected.

I always thought I was a pretty good retoucher and the idea of someone else retouching my work scared me! Were they as good at retouching as me? Would they over retouch and ruin my images? How would they know what my original vision was for the images as I was taking them?

But as my focus became worse and worse, I finally decided to bite the bullet and give a professional retoucher a go. I had heard many horror stories, so I was preparing for the worst case scenario.

The strangest thing happened that day, I received a cold email from a retoucher (I usually receive many of these per daily) but something felt different about this one, so I decided to send a reply for the first time and suss them out.

Alex, the retoucher, was quick to respond, smart and seemed to LOVE retouching. He was really passionate about it. He was from Moldova and was traveling the world while retouching to fund his lifestyle. I liked him straight away!

Alex created a Dropbox folder for me and I copied my most recent wedding into it. He said he would retouch a wedding for me for free to prove how awesome he was.

So far so good, and as there was no risk I was happy to give him a go!

The photos were ready a week later and Alex scheduled a call with me over Skype so I could go through his work and critique anything that I wasn’t happy with.

And in that moment my life changed!

I went through every single photo with him and was so happy with his work, I couldn’t contain my excitement! He nailed the style I was going for. The images were bright, vibrant, full of colour and the right amount of contrast. His attention to detail was perfect and the overall look and feel was exactly what I was looking for. He was actually a way better retoucher than me!

If you’re interested, you can check out the quality of his retouching/editing on my images here – Melbourne Wedding Photographer – it’s not crazy, out there or over the top, it’s just really nice, clean, natural looking editing that works perfectly for my style of shooting.

We agreed that he would continue retouching my work for $0.40 per image which costs me about $200 per wedding.

This was a breakthrough point in my photography business! Getting Alex on board completely freed up my week so that I could concentrate on more important tasks that pushed my business forward.

Here are 10 things I started doing every week instead of retouching:

• SEO: I studied SEO and optimised my website to hit page 1 of google which attracted more enquiries.
• Marketing: I built new business partnerships with industry suppliers which attracted more enquiries.
• Product development: I designed new packaging for my products which saved me money and improved my brands image.
• Sales: I did sales training which increased my booking rate and average sale.
• Blogging: I started writing blog post about my favourite weddings which increased traffic to my website which attracted more enquiries.
• Social Media: I had more time to stay on top of my social media, which attracted more enquiries.
• Better photography: I spent more time refining my photography skills and style by studying other award winning photographers from around the world.
• More money: As I started getting a LOT more enquiries I put my prices up by 25% which easily paid for the retouching bill.
• Studio Ninja: I found the time to start Studio Ninja!
• Relax: I started chilling out more with my newly acquired free time 🙂

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Thanks so much for reading!

I hope you enjoyed this post about retouching and how outsourcing it changed my life. Maybe by outsourcing your retouching it can change your life too!

If you have any questions or suggestions I would love to hear them! Stay tuned for the next post!!