Iwas referred to Daniel Kopton of Danklife Photo Retouching by photographer and friend Jamie Kripke. I was told Dan was an amazing retoucher, works with some of the best and had some great stories and was also one of the nicest. I emailed him, he was up for it and suggested we do the interview as a casual chat on the phone. Over the course of two very fun hour-and-a-half-long talks, we covered trends in photography and retouching, what makes a good retoucher and talked in-depth about the process and the images themselves.
Danklife is based in Portland, Oregon, specializes in photo illustration and retouching and has a client list that includes Nike, Adidas, Oakley, Mars, Activision, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated, Spyder, REI, Zumba and Best Buy among others.
A big thank you to Dan for generously sharing so much of his time on the interview and being willing to talk about so much of his process. After reading the interview, be sure to check out more of his work and the before and after slider on his site.
POP: How big a staff do you have at DankLife Studios and what services do you offer?
We currently have five people on staff at Danklife. We do everything from high-end photo illustration and retouching work to bulk catalog and stock work. We have a green screen studio for shooting product and apparel swaps with a full set of Dedolights and strobes to match lighting. I am the primary shooter and our lead high-end illustrator. There are three other retouchers who specialize in various other aspects of post. We have recently hired a full-time producer to smooth out projects.
POP: What is your background and how did you build a career in retouching?
I first started shooting when I was 12 and developed my first roll of film when I was 14. By my senior year of high school I was in the photo lab for most of the day with yearbook, newspaper, TA, etc. I went to college for a degree in photography and there I started retouching. This was back in the day of using 80 MG Syquest discs the size of dinner plates and film recorders.
After college I worked at an evidence lab in Chicago as a printer. I printed from negatives in a darkroom with five enlargers plus a mural enlarger and went from enlarger to enlarger running the prints. I wore a full yellow hazmat suit to clean the rollers on the Kreonite color processors. Nasty stuff. Digital was just becoming a viable media for print around this time, so it was just starting to be used to phase out the chemical process.
From there I moved to LA where I worked in labs that were primarily doing stills and movie posters for the movie industry. That’s where I first encountered a full digital workflow. Drum scanning stills, doing all the post work and then outputting to Opal film recorders. Had a few other jobs at labs and spent a few years at Corbis working in stock photography during the transition of film cameras to digital capture. After I left Corbis I started Danklife.
One thing I will say about film and chemistry is that I have an Epson printer here and can print on anything I want without a whole wall of toxic chemistry. Film chemistry is truly nasty stuff. People look back on it fondly, but I was neck deep in that muck. It’s not pleasant or good for the environment.
POP: How did you build your business?
All word of mouth. You’re only as good as your last job and you’ve got to be really good and dedicated to it. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. It started spreading—photographers to agencies, and then to clients.
POP: What does it take to be a successful retoucher?
Retouchers in general are weird people. If you’re talking with one who is happy and ‘great!’ they’re probably not a great retoucher. We have to fiddle with details at 200x magnification all day long about 10 inches from a monitor. We would have been taxidermists two hundred years ago sitting in a dark, musty store.
It’s really about the attention to detail and the patience/passion to work like that. Good retouchers find that quite satisfying. There is a lot of detail work we do that we know clients will never see, but we see it and that’s where the fun is. Making an image as pefect and cool looking as we can. Knowing that no matter what is sent in we can make it better. It’s a specific mentality, creative problem solving as opposed to out and out creation of an image.
Sometimes… sometimes we are given a box of bolts and we gotta make a car… lol! ”
POP: At what point are you brought in to the process?
It depends on the client and project, sometimes we are involved from the beginning of the bidding process and sometimes it just shows up one day with rush turnaround. Sometimes it starts with the photographer, sometimes with the agency, sometimes with the client direct. It varies from job to job.
POP: Do you collaborate on concept and creative solutions?
Once again, it varies from job to job. Some people want our creative input, which changes price points. Clients come to me with problems and I give solutions based on how they want to solve the problem. In a good job, I’m given a solid deck with direction and examples. In other jobs it will be “Romance the images!” Which, well, there is a lot of opinion in that kind of direction.
POP: What is your process for building an estimate?
The clients sends us files or a pdf with examples of what work needs to be done. We break the project down to line items and per hour estimates. So a typical estimate could have a line for shooting vie shoes , then a line for compositing those shoes into the existing imagery. Add a line for over all toning, another for the color up to change the shirt to red. This way the client can see where their money is going and can judge what is most important to them or fits the budget. We really think it’s important to break it all down so it’s spelled out very clearly. Projects can change on a dime in this industry and this gives everyone the clearest explanation.
All the background athletes were “colored up” from white to black uniforms and had numbers added. Each athlete is a different single image, had to pull ones that all lead to the same action feel. Shoes were swapped on DWade and shot here in the green screen room. Background is built from 2 different images. All client supplied besides the shoe reshooting.
For the Nike image below, we shot a lot of parts of another embroidered label with a macro lens and then reassembled the threads to fill out the new type and logos thread by thread. Then we mapped it all to another black base plate that you see. Added some lighting and finally dropped it all onto a close up shot of a jersey for the white. So this little image was highly complicated. The final piece was printed out eight feet across so it had to be perfect. It’s not just used on billboards or adds, Nike likes to print these out big in the stores where customers can get within inches of the work. At that scale and being able to get that close, it really has to be perfect.
POP: There’s a myth out there that it’s all done in post.
Well, that’s the definition of a myth right? Something people think is real, but it’s not? The difference between a photographer who knows light and one who doesn’t can’t be overstated. If a photographer doesn’t have a sense of light, then you won’t be able to do nearly as much with the files. Someone may ask to make an image look like a Jill Greenberg shoot, but if it’s one soft box just blasting, it’s never going to happen. If we get a high level of quality in, then we can take something to a whole new level instead of just struggling to make it look halfway decent.
Technically, we can advise them if they’re going for a certain look. Most photographers on this level know what they want and just might ask for tips technically to fit odd client requests. Green versus Blue versus Grey screen. What plates to shoot, etc…
When we’re trying to help a photographer visualize what they want, it’s about helping them make sure they shoot the bits and pieces so we can build something out of it. But, that is when we are talking multiple composites and shooting plates with products and details.
POP: Why product and uniform swaps?
We do a good bit of product swaps where we change out uniforms, bathing suits, sunglasses, etc. This is because the client might still be prototyping while the advertising is ramping up. So the models and photographers are booked, but the product is not “final”. When it’s t-shirts, the graphics on the t-shirts might not be printed yet – they’re just designs. The shoot can happen and we get the files from the designer and drop it in, graphics swap. Those are easy. If the whole build of a jacket, uniform, or shoe changes, then we have to get the physical product and shoot it here, matching lighting and poses to composite it in.
When it comes to some of the sports marketing imagery, you are dealing with athletes on the court. When the art director finds a really strong image and they want to use it it could be last year’s uniform or the “away” uniform and we need to update it to the current uniform and shoes.
POP: You’ve been a retoucher for 20 years. What have you seen change in this time?
The actual work has stayed the same for the most part. But the turnaround times for projects has really been ramped up. Which means we find ourselves doing more product swaps than in the past since it’s all “GO.” Everything is really compressed time wise now. Some agencies are starting to push back and slow down, which is nice as that leads to a better planned shoot and smoother project. For the most part though it feels like people seem to live in permanent panic state in this industry right now.
POP: How should a Photographer approach Post? Things they think they can do but that would be best left to a retoucher?
This comes down to money. Do you want to spend two weeks retouching a gig after you’ve shot it or do you want to try to book the next shoot? There are many jobs that are two or three days of shooting plus all the pre-production. Do you want to spend the next 2 weeks in Photoshop or setting up the next gig? On some projects the post-production can go on considerably longer. That’s when the photographer needs to find someone to get their ideas out there and work on the next shoot.
POP: In-house retoucher vs. hiring retouching firm?
Again, this is about time. Team vs. one person. Some people don’t want to take on that commitment to pay someone full-time. Using a Post House also frees the Photographer up so they don’t have to deal with every little email exchange. “The logo on the tag on the waist of the jeans now needs to be a darker red” Is that something as a photographer that you find important to your visual style? Is that the kind of detail you want to be emailing about everyday, or would you rather be location scouting for that epic view? We free the photographer up to get back to shooting instead of sitting in the dark doing post and emailing about product details in the images.
POP: How fast are things changing with Photoshop and CG and how does this really impact retouching and what clients expect?
It’s hard to say. Three years ago people were saying if you didn’t get into video, you’d be dead. That never panned out. If I was a catalog house, I’d be worried. I think a couple companies are moving to all CG models. It depends on whether people take to it or not. There’s such a push back against things looking fake. Photography as a medium is not going to go away. These are just business decisions and fashion and trends.
I was just looking at Levi’s website for the Commuter product. The images are highly realistic so you get the feeling of the product. That’s a very effective style choice. But, I can see the people shooting screws and nuts and catalogs for U-Line going CG. The higher end stuff, people will probably always want to see it.
POP: New authenticity in images, lot of education or work on your end to fix or up the production on photos?
Projects are trending towards less artifice and less polish, which is a good thing. We are starting to get less of the kind of requests where we need to composite 12 different limbs onto someone. It is kinda funny as we try to steer the client away from it because we are talking our way out of more money. We always advise to get it in camera. Anytime you have to bring in other body parts, it has an element of falseness. When you start stacking too much of that, you have something that is just strange. It doesn’t look natural. It’s 14 body parts and then the photographer changed lenses and stood up. They don’t understand that you can’t do that. You can’t take telefoto and combine that with wide angle and expect it to look real.
There’s a trend towards getting it in camera and keeping the flaws and imperfections because that lends to realism. It’s more on the photographer, versus a job where you ask who is doing image capture. A good photographer knows what they need to do to capture a good image. It takes someone with an eye and who understands the decisive moment.
POP: As a retoucher, do you have your own style? How do you balance this with helping your clients them find their retouching style? And meeting the needs of specific projects?
We’re here to do a job. We’re not here to brand a campaign with “The Danklife Style.” We’re here to help Art Directors and Photographers get a look and communicate visually what they want to say. We give them our opinion when asked and build up 10 variations on a style directive so we can show the different approaches there are to a “Look”. We work in a wide range of styles so we can nail down what they are looking for. It’s actually quite fun to do that.
POP: Different style for your European clients?
European style is cleaner and colder, visually and methodically. German photography is really at the root of it. Bernd & Hilda Becher. Gursky. Clean, methodical. With our European clientele, we keep the palette cool. The American palette has a warmer, fuzzier feel.
POP: Is there a Ryan McGinley filter?
That would be the “Vintage look”. There are many ways of getting that. With a basic google search you can find ways to emulate any film look.
POP: Are you still shooting and how much of your work is shot in camera?
I just picked up the Fuji X100. I love the rangefinder. I haven’t had this much fun shooting since I was in college. You can see my personal work at www.pixelrust.com.
Most everything is shot in camera. The image below was shot entirely in camera with a Vivitar 283 in Astoria using light painting and a 10-minute exposure.
The shot of the four guys at the table was all plated though. I wanted that detached look and hard lighting on each person and the only way to get that is buy shooting it all as plates and assembling in post.
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