Hi,

I’m working with Photoshop since many years, but I want to become a professional career in beauty and fashion retouching.

It’s great to find so many free RAWs for practice in modelmayhem, but I am wondering how to get your first client.

In one article of the Retouching Academy Julia Kuzmenko says as a new retoucher you should start contacting local photographers. Unfortunately in the country where I live there is no market in the beauty and fashion industry. Here there are only a few self-employed photographers and they retouch their images themselves because there is not enough budget for a retoucher.

So, can anyone suggest me a website where I can find freelance-jobs? I know there are some websites where people post small jobs, but all I could find so far were jobs with a very, very bad rate.
Or would you suggest to contact some professional photographers you follow if you can do a test with them?

Also I am wondering how to write a contract. I can"t find examples in the internet for retouchers and I am afraid I won"t include all important details.

To the professionals of the industry: How did you get your first clients and is there anyone who could show examples of a contract?

Thanks for your help.

Lisa

Add another three zeros to your 5 friends, and you'll find CLIENTS !

Dear Abdel,

sorry, but I am looking for serious answers only. Additionally I am new in modelmayhem so it's normal not to have a lot of contacts here.

Regards, Lisa

He was being serious, clients won't come to you, YOU go to them. Also try first getting some business and marketing classes under your belt, those help a ton.

try on elance.com

I have a bad habit of not working with a contract for small jobs besides the verbal contract of my e-mail paper trail, but for big jobs I learned how to write a contract when I was working as a photographer partially from Business and Legal Forms for Photographers by Tad Crawford.  I don't think there's an equivalent book out there for retouchers.  (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong because I'd love to own it myself.)  I know there are versions of the book for other types of artists.  Some of those may be more applicable.  However, one of those books may be valuable just for learning the general language of a contract with some ideas of bases you need to cover.

Really, a contract can be pretty plain language when you come down to it, however.  So long as it spells out when and how you get paid and maybe whether or not you get to use the images in your portfolio.  It should probably detail your time frame for completing the work and whether you get paid if they don't like the work.  Perhaps how many revisions they get before you charge them more.  Things like that.  I may be missing something.  I don't have a contract in front of me and like I said, I have a bad habit of not doing formal contracts for my smaller jobs.  I just keep a paper trail.

Edit: There's a Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers.  That may be more similar to retouching because they're more likely to be doing work for hire and not dealing with copyright.  I haven't read it, however, so I can't say for sure.