Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Currently one of my main gigs is Photo Retouching. Some of my work is bulk retouching for photographers, or smaller volume jobs like headshots, fashion ads, and the artistic composite when time allows. I've done projects on guitar photography, and would love to do more since the subject is one I happen to be passionate about. I know some of you out there are photographers by profession or at least partake as a serious hobby. It would be fun work for me if anyone out there ever has a photo that needs enhancing, or an old faded/damaged photo that needs restoration. Here are some samples of related projects I've done:

Fellow RRF member Zdenek Vseticka asked me to produce a series of color tests on a 4001 bass so he could see what some of his ideas looked like completed. He had an idea for an all white bass and wanted to see variations of the hardware finish. I used my own 1968 4001 MG as the basis. (The original photo was created using a color gradient in Photoshop for the background)

Here's how the series progressed:

More of the same series:









If I recall correctly, he ended up going with the white with all chrome hardware.

Here are more examples of various projects -

The basic gear line-up:



The Rick-O-Lantern:



The shot I submitted for the 2008 RRF Calendar - used for Oct:



The original shot submitted for July 2008:

Very cool work Mark.

Some fun projects:



PLUS



EQUALS



And of course, the legendary Bass Gopher:




If anyone has a project they'd like an assist on, you know where to find me. Here are some sample of my NON-RRF related work:

Cosmo Studios

I almost forgot -

J Willy's 381, before & after photo enhancement:

Thanks, Brian!

walker wrote:

Mark, how'd you set those up so they could be easily cut out later?

Excellent work, Mark!

Can you take a retouched image and put it back on to film for traditional printing with enlargers?

Wes - I just took the shots against a white background. Makes it easy to crop & fade out any unwanted background distractions.

Jeff - That's an excellent question. I'll have to look into that. No one has ever made that request before. I think most photogs have converted to digital and make prints from TIFF files, both CMYK and RGB formats now. But that would be cool to be able to return a digitized photo to film so you can work with it on the old pristine enlarging equipment. I'll look into farming that process out and get back to you.

M
W

walker wrote:Jeff - That's an excellent question. I'll have to look into that. No one has ever made that request before. I think most photogs have converted to digital and make prints from TIFF files, both CMYK and RGB formats now. But that would be cool to be able to return a digitized photo to film so you can work with it on the old pristine enlarging equipment. I'll look into farming that process out and get back to you.

M
W

Thanks for looking into this as we occasionally get requests at the lab for retouching, but we would, ideally, like to make fiberbase (archival) prints from the retouched image. This way we can hire you to do the retouching work instead of turning the job away altogether. a win-win for both of us!

I wanna see more pics of that Bass Gopher.

Thanks for the consideration, Jeff. I'll hit you with a PM once I've done my homework. By the way, are those Yashica cameras in your avatar pic?

Kira - to my knowledge, that's the only known photo of the Bass Gopher in existence. There may be others, but this is the only one I've seen.

walker wrote:TBy the way, are those Yashica cameras in your avatar pic?

They are Rolleis, two 2.8F models with Zeiss Planar 80mm lenses, and the one in the middle is my former 3.5E with a 75mm Planar lens.

My two favorite retouches are the white on white with chrome hardware, and the white with gold hardware and matte gold/clear plastic backpainted gold p/g. Nice Job Mark! White with CB looks super cool!