Virtual Assistants and Retouchers: Are They Right for You?

Last week's article touched on a minimal approach to editing. While I am quite the control freak in my own work, sometimes, I am overwhelmed by the amount of tasks being thrown my way. I look to professional retouchers and virtual assistants to help me through the busy seasons.

Everyone Is a Retoucher These Days

It is said that the most successful entrepreneurs have multiple sources of income. With the overly saturated market of photographers, it was no surprise that many turned to retouching as another source of income. However, with that said, you need to find one that works with your brand and identity. I have been through many. Let me tell you, "control freak" is the right word when it comes to my images. It's not that I do not think anyone else can do the work, it is that I feel the control over my business slip right through my fingers.

That was until the underwater section of my company began. Season after season, I found myself spending less time with the shooting portion and more time with administrative work that I knew could easily be handled by someone else.

I met Jen Swedhin in a boudoir forum a few years ago, we partied in Vegas at WPPI, and I eventually hired her to take over some editing and administrative tasks when she started her new company. So, you can say we have become well acquainted. While Jen was an incredible boudoir shooter, she had (at the time) moved to a new city, having to start over in many ways.

I was slashing my current client base, starting in a city where I only knew a handful of people, and completely changing my shooting niche and style. Instead of the light and airy boudoir I had grown a business around, I decided to take a sharp turn into sexy men.

Just as any new niche takes time to establish and grow, she started up a second virtual assistant and retouching business to fill in the gaps. Nino Batista was her inspiration when he reached out, asking how to get his high quantity (and often time-wasting) inquiries under control.

It sparked the idea that there are likely many other photographers in need of small-scale and occasional assistance, and my 10 years of secretarial and administrative assistant history on top of my detailed knowledge of what a working photographer does and needs would make a perfect combination.

So, Jen Gets Shit Done was born. This company name was pure brilliance, as it spoke to anyone in the industry. She built websites, boosted SEO, prepped blogs, created documents, set up client management systems, did invoicing, culled weddings, and scheduled marketing efforts, along with a million other things.

Her work is enticing to so many creatives because she sufferers from adult ADD, which affects many photographers (and others in the industry). Her clients were struggling with so many of the same issues, so Jen Gets Shit Done took away those tasks specific to the client.

Highly creative but no motivation. Could edit the same image set for hours, but wouldn’t return an email for three weeks. Beat themselves up because they knew what they needed to do but just couldn’t make themselves do it. There are strong correlations to creatives and ADD, so in my mind, there is no doubt that lots of photographers are affected by it. And I developed lots of techniques to help deal with it.

Over the last year and a half, the business morphed. While the virtual assistant portion is still going strong (building websites, SEO help, etc.), the majority has become boudoir retouching. The company has a team of six photographers that take jobs to help supplement their income in slow weeks. This allows Jen to help more clients while still having time to focus on her own photography and family.

I have learned that although boudoir photography is a major niche with many successful photographers making big dollars, it is majorly underserved in terms of outsourcing options. Even with my team, I still have to turn away photographers every week that need images retouched. It's highly specialized, sensitive, and important work. When you are retouching someone’s boudoir images, you aren’t just cleaning skin and smoothing edges, you are affecting the way they will see themselves, the way they experience their images, and how much money they will be spending with their photographer. I really think understanding the stakes involved is what has made me so successful. I truly care if my client, the photographer, loves the images. I want them to make more money. I want their client to feel beautiful and see herself in a positive way. I put myself in both of their shoes with each and every set, and I celebrate with my client when their sale is higher than they expect it to be.

How Jen "Gets Shit Done"

I asked Jen to share a few tips on productivity. Number 8 seems scary for me!

1. Use a timer. If you feel like you are spending too much time retouching, you probably are. Set a timer, and try to hit your goals. For a regular boudoir image, I aim for five minutes per image.
2. Track your weekly time with a time clock. If you feel like all you do is work and nothing else, take an honest look at your hours. You will probably find that you are only working 15 hours a week and wasting a lot of time in the black hole of the Internet.
3. Schedule your day in blocks. This is called the Pomodoro technique: work in little bursts; when that time is up, change to a different task: 20 minutes per task, then a 10-minute break. Keep that brain fresh.
4. Find a system that works for you. Asana, 17Hats, Acuity, whatever it is, work the system. Use it however your brain needs. I’m a visual thinker, so most of the studio management software doesn't work for me; it's too linear. Find what makes sense to you.
5. Outsource what you hate. Anything that makes you sigh or roll your eyes when you sit down should be outsourced. Find an assistant, and get that shit off of your plate.
6. Use apps. We all know Google calendar is awesome, but it is limited. Here are some of my favorites: Asana, DropTask, Trello, Teamweek, Acuity.
7. Stimulate your mind. I literally can’t work without noise, just something extra to stimulate the rowdy part of my brain. So, I watch TV. Find what works for you; for many people, it’s music (that’s too much for my swiss cheese brain). I’ve got it dialed in: I can’t watch movies, only TV. Hour-long shows are better than 30-minute shows, and dramas are better than comedies, because comedies distract me too much. I need something that can be heard and absorbed and occasionally seen, so nothing heavy (forget Game of Thrones, too many details). House, Burn Notice, White Collar, Scandal, and Vampire Diaries are fantastic binge series to have in the background.
8. Take email off of your phone. Every time I say this, everyone around me drops dead, but I’m serious. Schedule in email time, respond during those blocks, and you will spend less time looking at your phone, worrying about your emails, and checking emails that you don’t actually need to respond to. Or, my personal issue: checking the email and telling myself I will respond later when I have a minute and then forgetting forever.
9. Be self aware. Listen to yourself, and note what works. If you are super productive and on task one day, dissect it and figure out why. If you need short bursts, then do that. And trust me when I say that all photographers feel like they are a mess and their workflow is ridiculous. If it works, do it.

Cheesecake Method

Cheesecake is delicious, but in small bites. You can’t eat an entire piece of cheesecake in a big gulp, and you shouldn’t look at your tasks in a big gulp either; that will overwhelm. Instead, break it down into small bites. For images, that might be 10-image chunks. For website updating, that might be 20-minute increments.

1. Find new portfolio images
2. Resize images
3. Upload to portfolio
4. SEO images
5. Update wording

Use Color Coding to Separate Categories

Jen uses pink for photography, orange for retouching that is sent to her, yellow for admin work, and blue for random to-do items. Once a chunk is finished, she takes it down and tosses it, giving the immediate reward of crumpling the paper.

Each sticky notes represents a cheesecake bite. They have the name of the project, the image range or task to do, when it is due, and the bottom corner is how long it will take or how many images.

If you are a digital person, Asana is a great tool to do this exact setup. Instead of color-coded categories, I have projects, sections and tasks, with sub-tasks being my cheesecake bites. This is a powerful and free app that has so many uses, whether you are by yourself or working with a team.

Retouching Setup

(Image Courtesy of Petra Herrmann)

This is where people are eating up all of their time. Editing and retouching, when done right, can turn someone from a decent photographer into a fantastic photographer. Just as stated in the previous article, skin retouching is so crucial. Frequency Separation is where it is at! And it's not as scary as it sounds, once you master it and understand how to use it, your editing time will cut in half.

FS will let me fully edit a tricky image (think cellulite, cystic acne, and bad lighting) from head to toe in 5-7 minutes. That is from raw to print-ready, looking natural and clean. There are loads of great tutorials out there, so I won’t dive into those details, but I will confirm that yes, you can do it, yes, it is worth it, and yes, it works on all images. My tablet setup is what really makes a huge difference in my life, though. I have an older Wacom Intuos 4 Medium and am 99% keyboard free in my editing. I have my bottom buttons programmed to my main 4 uses: Option, Undo (Cmd+Opt+Z, the several step undo, so I can do many steps back if I need to), Healing (Shift+J to cycle through the healing brushes), and Brush (B). The dial always stays on brush size, and the top buttons are programmed to radial menus. These three on-screen control menus are all of the shortcuts that I use, and I leave them open and pinned in my window. They can be programmed to be anything, but this specific set of 24 covers everything I need and has cut my editing time per image by a least a minute. My fingers never leave my tablet.

If you've decided you are at the right place in your career to be able to afford to pay someone, let go of some tasks, and be a bit more free to do the things you got into this business in the first place, then retouchers are perhaps the way to go. While I still love to work my edits, giving someone else the boring admin work that has plagued me from being more creative has changed my company for the better.