Creative Retouching Is Retouching, Too!
Creative mastermind Roderique is joining us today, discussing whether image manipulation shall be equally included to the term of retouching. Or if compositing artwork and beauty retouching are two completely different beasts to master.

Roderique can draw from a variety of educations and has working experience in fields like 3D, special effects for sills and motion pictures, graphics and design, and of course photography and retouching.

Roderique who also goes by the artist's name of DRACORUBIO found his way into the creative industry by drawing. As a child, drawing was his passion and his parent's house is still stuffed with books full of his early artistry steps. Being a child of the 80's he was heavily influenced by the time's comics as well. Later on he went on studying at the arts academy in the Netherlands  ending with a bachelor of arts degree in 3D and visual effects.

By the time computer technology was just rising and Roderique found his ideas hardly could be resembled like he imagined them to be. So he found himself in a situation lacking the tools needed to create his own art whilst commercially working in the motion graphics industry.

 
What Allows Roderique To Get His Job Done:
"I love everything that is technical!"
Hardware

* Wacom Intuos Pro S
* Dell 27"4K Monitor
* Apple MacBook Pro
* Apple MacMini
* Drobo Raid System

Software

* Adobe Photoshop
* Adobe Lightroom
* Capture One
* Helicon
* Olympus Capture

When The Artist's Juices Run Out
Working in the commercial world can be frustrating over time. Sure there is good money to be made but this often goes hand in hand with less creativity and less freedom to create. For some this can become draining over time. Even more with technology lacking behind the capabilities of your imagination.
"I was simply not creating anymore"
After finding himself unsatisfied with the job he had back then he stopped working in the commercial industry while he got back to mostly for himself. Whilst testing out different media types and processes, at some point, photography came around which until that day was completely off his radar. Learning about photography and exploring the way of early digital photography was fun and got his creative juices again.

Photoshop was an application he already knew but now taking pictures himself there was a whole new world to explore. Processing images, what most people used Photoshop for, was simply not enough, not creative enough.
Working in 3D vs Working With A Camera
Believe it or not, 3D and Photography are not as different as you might think. While working with 3D actually the process of having physical equipment is reassembled quite closely to traditional photography or videography.

Roderique had his click moment when this new medium made sense to him and turned into becoming much more fun.

Having worked in 3D and visual effects, it was not a matter of just taking pictures.