For more than a decade, commercial photographer and retoucher John Barnard has worked across high-end campaigns for brands including Nike, Apple, Restoration Hardware, and Pottery Barn. But after 15 years in the industry, what ultimately pushed him to build his own software wasn’t a creative breakthrough or a business pivot. It was a broken tethering connection on set. “I plug in my Canon 5D Mark IV. The camera I’ve used on every job for years. And it won’t tether. Not to anything except Lightroom Classic,” Barnard says. That moment, he explains, came after years of frustration with increasingly expensive and restrictive software ecosystems that he felt no longer aligned with how photographers actually work on set. “I’ve been in this industry for 15 years… In all those years, here’s what I’ve paid to rent my tools: roughly $3,500. Amount I own: $0,” Barnard says. From On-Set Frustration to Building a Tool From Scratch Barnard’s new application, Tether Studio , is the result of that frustration.…