We were lucky to catch up with Nic Greene recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nic , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Freelancing is not a nine to five and working as a creative retoucher and finisher, freelance, is how I’ve made my living for quite a while now. While it might not be everyone’s dream career, it is and has been a deeply rewarding and fulfilling path to a good living for me. As it is now, I work from home, remotely, serving clients across multiple time zones.

I have worked at times when the market was glutted with assignments and at times, like during the pandemic, when it died for a while. 

These are the four most important factors in getting to work and staying busy.

Do your research – who do you want to work for? I’ve never gotten a job through HR. Where there was an agency whose work I liked, I’d find out who was responsible for hiring people like me and get in touch with them, by letter, phone, email or social media (options have changed over time!). If they weren’t looking for someone like me at that moment I’d keep in touch. To keep working you need to have a number of clients, so that when one is quiet another can reach out. Keep reaching out to those people – I have had people finally give me work after months or years of doing this.

Always keep promoting. I don’t mean telling people “I need work” (there’s a lot of ways to communicate this without in any way appearing desperate) – most important is keeping in touch with professionals you have worked with and one’s you want to work with. This is particularly important when you’re busy and have a lot of work, because that job will end and the last thing you want is to wake up the next day with no idea where your next job is coming from. Use email, text, social media and keep the focus on your interest in the other person, what they need, etc., Keep people apprised of what you have been doing and make it easy for someone to get your book and resume (I provide a direct download link). Don’t get discouraged if someone doesn’t answer, they’re usually busy and will call you when they need something. And when they’re calling, it is with the expectation that you will help them sort it out. That is part of the excitement of what I do and is the opposite dynamic of a nine to five where you always kind of know how things are going to be next week.

Provide exemplary service. This may sound vague, but it comes down to a few key things. Answer any communication immediately, even if it’s just to let the person know you understood what they asked you for. Let people know what is happening and deliver on time or ahead of schedule. If something needs to be corrected, then do the correction and get it back. What you think of the correction, or that you don’t agree with it, is really very secondary to providing what the client is asking for, even if it doesn’t seem right to you. So, I do everything I can to keep the communication positive and proactive. Of course, if someone asks me what I think I tell them. They key thing to understand is that in what can be a high-pressure job situation, a positive attitude and willingness to see a job through to an agreed upon final product is very likely to keep work coming back to me again and again.

Keep growing, and develop your craft. Though there is nothing wrong with going to school to learn a trade, in my field I have learned everything either on the job, or by figuring out how to do something I didn’t know how to do, often by asking someone who does. Here’s a relevant example of what it means to keep growing. Lately the industry is facing significant changes with the advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence. Rather than lament the possibility of losing work to a text driven prompt, I have spent time learning how to use the technology to augment my skills and add to my tool chest.

Lastly, it’s important to know what you’re good at. Most people with similar skillsets tend to specialize on a particular kind of content. For me it’s been Entertainment work more than anything else because of the opportunity to creatively enhance given work.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I fell into retouching and finishing because I was a fine arts major with no real drive to make a living selling paintings. It was a living at first, something that I could do with my skillset as a painter. It is an activity that is exacting and precise and takes the time it takes to become skilled. Over time I became accomplished at the basic skills: masking (cutting out an image, be it crudely or with great detail – e.g., hair), retouching (adding or subtracting elements in an image), grading (color correction/enhancement), compositing (combining different images) and the basics of integrating into a cohesive whole.

Initially, I had a job prepping files for printing. It wasn’t super well paid but it afforded time to get skilled and gave me contacts with various agencies who in turn helped me start my freelance career. I landed recurring work at an agency that was producing a lot of high-profile movie posters. The lead retoucher mentored me, and over time I started finishing files. I built a tidy collection of work to be able to attract new clients, and so it has gone on and on.

The industry has changed over time and keeps evolving. Where I might have had a week to do a job, now  I have a day. The technology has evolved too, Photoshop and other tools are way more powerful than they were – meaning two things – a lot of the work I did in the past can now be done by relatively unskilled people, and that what I can do is way more sophisticated than it was. There really are not many people doing what I do, worldwide, and that means I have to distinguish myself to be relevant to clients – give them a reason to want to hire me. For me it’s about being able to produce highly aesthetic creative work, being trusted to take an existing comp and make it into something magical.

I am proud of having been able to produce some great work, supporting great campaigns.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Being good at something and being a good work resource are not guarantees of work. Freelancing for agencies is in essence performing a function when the existing onsite resources are already overloaded. When the market is good, not in recession or a pandemic, there’s always a need for freelancers. When things slow down you won’t get as many calls, so that is when you have to pound the pavement, find new clients, and be very available for whatever comes in.

Over time this kind of dynamic has taught me to believe in myself and my ability and not to gauge how good I am based on whether the phone is ringing. The other takeaway is, of course, to develop relationships with creatives who don’t have the existing staff.

The point is, being a freelancer really comes down to paving your own way, and reviewing what you do, knowing your strengths and having enough confidence and persistence to keep going.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I use social media to get work. It is a very simple drill: connect with people who could provide me work, and keep them apprised of the fact that I can do the work they need and that I am worth hiring. How? I send them links to my books, I post stuff I’ve done (always clear this with clients), and I keep visible, following companies I want to work for etc.,

My strategy is not to stalk or blast people with requests for work, it’s more of a matter of keeping myself in front of the target market – posting weekly and so on. I always connect with others on the basis of what I can do to help them, not so much trying to be interesting or get clicks. There’s enough of that already and I haven’t seen it leading to work, just views.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nicgreene-retoucher.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicgreeneretoucher/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nictheretoucher/

Image Credits
Carnival Row and Good Omens, courtesy of Amazon Creative Print Services.