Today's Guest: Brock Mc Fadzean
Brock McFadzean is a visual communicator who currently resides in Sydney, Australia. He uses photography as a medium to express his ideas and thought processes visually. His work is a mix of highly graphical architectural elements and simplistic yet emotive images between Portraiture, Fashion and Architecture. He is continually challenging and pushing the creative and technical boundaries within his work. Through his ever growing desire to learn, Brock has had the opportunity to travel internationally in post production and assisting other photographers on their projects.
Photoshopping The McFadzean Way
Brock is a multimedia multi-talent from Australia. He works as a photographer and retoucher but also gets to join big productions as the digital assistant and develops digital workflows for photographers or agencies to set them up for the future.

He got introduced to Photoshop and retouching years ago while he was studying and lucky to meet an Adobe Evangelist. He helped him understand workflows, working consistency with multiple images and gain a more fundamental understanding of Photoshop.
Two Approaches To Working On Images
Retouching to him is either a way of processing an image to shape and craft an image into a direction you want it to go or, as he states, can be the more hands-on approach on retouching. It can be commercial, composite work, beauty retouching,...
Noone really wants to put their hand up and say they enjoy retouching beauty images.
That said, Brock enjoys all sorts of retouching but rather likes the change of topics for him not to get bored and frustrated having to do the same thing over and over again.
What It Means To Work In Advertising
With years of experience, Brock shares some valuable insights on what's going on behind the scenes during the production of advertising campaigns.
Working in advertising is a whole other world. You have to be prepared for clients' way to communicate, multiple rounds of revisions, having the whole concept change throughout the course of productions, dealing with all sorts of demands and very time-critical deadlines as most commercial jobs are left up until the last minute.
A lot of photographers I know won't do their own retouching because it is not controlled by them, it is controlled by the advertising agency.

Retouching Education
On the other hand, while he was studying, Learning about photoshop and retouching was not really a part of the curriculum. Brock is convinced he was just lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time as for most people who get a formal photography education will have a hard time accumulating this amount of knowledge during the times of their studies. Thus, most people's first point of call is youtube. We look for "how is this done, how is that done?"

However, we are both convinced there needs to be a proper implementation in formal education as retouching, over the years, has become a fundamental part of the production chain. As of now, there is tons of material out there but mostly not structured. There needs to be some sort of structured training on digital post-production.

We might say this again and again. Learning about retouching is not about "How do I do XYZ". It's the how, not the why!
What Is Retouching?
Retouching is problem solving. You envision where you want to end uo and then you decide for the tools you are trying to use to get you there. Ideally in the fastest way possible. Brock adds, it also is not just about the knowledge but allso its application. Investing the time to learn de hands-on is more important than knowing all the theo...