Most printed fashion photography that you see, (if not all) has retouching done. With the exception of photojournalism, print ads involving almost anything is retouched. Magazine covers of beautiful skinny ladies keep doctors busy with troubled young teens hoping to shed that last dress size to make it to size“0”.
For portrait photographers such as myself, images are retouched a bit to enhance color or perhaps cover a small blemish. For me, when I photograph children, I find it hard enough to get a moving child that I crop later in post. Clients will ask to see the back of the camera when I am photographing. I would rather not, because I do have a vision of what the image is going to look like in my head. I have even had clients shoot the exact same pose the following year hoping to get the same type of image and can’t nail it. Why? The answer is obvious. They are not a photographer, just a picture taker. If my dentist were to perform root canal and then next year, in order to save money, I take a plyer to my mouth to perform root canal myself, some would call that ludicrous. But, people do strange things and trying to be a photographer is one of them.
I am attaching two before and afters. Here is the scenario of the photoshoot.
The child was 7 months old. The time of day was about 3:45 in the afternoon on the last week of November. The temp outside was about 40, and the wind was blowing. A bit cold. I was outside in a park in Queens, NY so there was no where to run and get warm. I instructed mom and dad to bring a blanket. It was a very grey day and the sky was filled with clouds. I knew I needed some sort of “fill” flash but did not want to use a speedlight because this little guy was very fair skinned. I did not want to blow out the highlights on his skin. So, I used a reflector to reflect back any light that I cold get even though it was cloudy. If you look closely in the boys eyes, you can see a reflector on the left part of his iris that my assistant is holding. Without “pop” in the boy’s eyes, the picture would lack kick. I had an 85 mm lens on and shot this at F 1/100 @ 5.6. The ISO was 400 with a Canon 5D Mark II.
The first two images are straight out of camera or “SOC”. Nothing has been done with them.
Straight out of camera
In post, I cropped it to a horizontal. Added a warming filter. Softened the dark circles under each eye. Bumped the contrast. I also put a small vignette around the edge. Upon completion, I did an over all sharpen.
Cropped the way I see it.
I always tell my clients that what you see is not what I see. Trust me. It’s great that you take photographs of your life. However, if you want “amazing”, see me. Experience counts.
