Posts Tagged ‘FAQ’

I am often asked if I airbrush (ie Photoshop) my work.  My answer is always a simple no.

It’s not quite so simple though, because I do do things with the photos I take.  What you see as the end result often looks quite different to the image you saw on the camera display.

I have a process through which I take the RAW image file from the camera and adjust things like exposure, colour balance, contrast, saturation, and sharpness.    I’ve also got another process that softens the skin just a little to make selected portraits more flattering.

I also love playing with the overall look of an image and I have another process that simulates the look from films of old, which is particularly fun and interesting to use for black and white images.

What else do I do?  I’ll edit out the occasional speck of dust that creeps onto the sensor, and I’ll crop.  I’m never afraid to crop images.

Basically though that’s all I do.  I won’t airbrush out your wrinkles to make you look younger, or elongate your body to make you look slimmer.  I don’t do that stuff now, and frankly I never will.  What I will do is to capture the real you, your character, warts and lines and all.

Take a flick through my portfolio pages, and the photos here on the blog.  None of them have been airbrushed.

Occasionally a client does do a little more editing with my finished image.  I’ve known a few who’ve airbrushed out the background so it’s all one colour and works better with the design the image is to be used with.

Sometimes I get asked by my clients, “but you’ve taken xxx photos, why are you only letting me choose xx“?

No, it’s not because I’m being mean or lazy.  It actually goes back a couple of years to the first time I photographed a wedding.  I was working as a second shooter with a local photographer so I could get a feel as to how weddings worked (I had not been to one for years).

After the wedding he told me that I could use 30 for my portfolio.  Baring in mind that I’d shot over 500 images at the wedding, 30 seemed an impossibly small number to get down to.

It took me some hours, but get down to 30 I did.  It was a very useful exercise because I found myself using only the very best images from the wedding.

Ever since then I’ve limited the number of images my clients can select and use.   The upshot is they only use the very best images from out shoot, and in turn this makes both them and me look better as a result.  Sure it might take them a little longer to select down to the number, but trust me its a positive exercise.

The photo up top is one of my 30 from my first wedding.