Monthly Archives: September 2011

The Barbie Effect

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Retouching is a beautiful thing.  It can remove a blemish, it can get rid of glass glare, it can diminish the wrinkles you have spent years giving yourself.  Notice I used the word diminish.  Not completely remove.  You’ve earned those wrinkles from years of hard work, laughter and in some cases worry.  They define your face and who you are.  Now I am not saying they should not be softened or toned down, just not completely removed.

In today’s digital retouching world there is a new phenomena called the “Barbie Effect”.  It is where every wrinkle, pore and imperfection is removed leaving the person’s face to look like a Barbie doll instead of a real person.

Many people will say, fashion magazines have been doing heavy retouching for years.  Very true.  They’ll air brush 20 lbs off a model or completely remove the bags that exists under a person’s eyes.  But the purpose of a fashion magazine is to sell an idea not reality.  You can explain that your 12 year old daughter.  But how do you explain it in a local magazine?  Or in your family portrait? Or business portrait?  It makes kids, especially young teenage girls – feel like that Barbie Doll effect is reality.  Causing many young girls today to strive for the perfect look – which is not reality.

I recently found a blog called Digitally Beautiful (http://digitallybeautiful.blogspot.com/) that shows the original photo and the after effect of some serious photoshop work with celebrities and fashion magazines.  You’ll be shocked to know the “Dove – Real Women”, campaign was retouched by one of the premier retouchers of fashion photographs.  If the campaign was suppose to be real women, retouching should not have been needed.  Since there is no before and after we will know what is reality and what is the image Dove wants you to see.

So when has retouching gone to far? Removing a blemish, softening a scar so it is not prominent, removing the shine caused by a person with oily skin.  Fine.  You should see pores, you should see laugh lines in the corner of a person’s eyes, you should see freckles.  All of these things are what make up your image of who you are and how people see you.

In today’s world, image is everything.   Let your image and that of your family be the real image of who you are and not some fake reality caused by photoshop retouching.

Next week – Ode to a Photographer.

Sorry, we can't fix you…

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To many times, people feel they can just fix it in Photoshop later.  At the studio we cringe when people say that because not everything can be fixed in Photoshop.  Especially with digital, it is critical to get a good exposure first!  In many cases a bad exposure can not be fixed.

Let’s look at an example of a bad photo that can not be fixed in any software.

Let me explain why this image can not be fixed.  An image is made up of millions of  colored pixels.  When those pixels are not correctly captured (an under or over exposed image)and you try to adjust the image so that it is the proper exposure your digital processing software (Photoshop) has to try to guess what color the pixels are in the dark area you are lightening up or the bright area you are trying to darken.  Sometimes it does a fabulous job, but most times it does not.  That is why you will see banding (lines going through the image) or green and red dots (pixels that are being created by your software).

Let’s look at an image with a simple fix…
This was an easy fix.  The over all exposure was almost right and it just needed a little brightness and to adjust the color.  Since light traveling through water has a different hue and you can’t costom white balance (I didn’t feel like getting wet by crawling in the tank with something white) fixing the color in Photoshop is the only way, unless you have an aquarium white balance setting in your camera.

Let’s look at another example that was an easy fix…
In this image the flash was pointed in the wrong place.  Dodging the girls at the top corrected the image.  There are many fixes that are very simple.  But as you can see, getting it right in the camera is super important.

Next week’s blog will post on Monday, September 11th.  It is Gregg’s story of leaving Newark that morning on a flight back to Florida – yes he and his brother both boarded planes that morning.  Check out his story.