My kids noses are not the only ones I wipe…
I thought I would start writing a little bit more about my editing process to educated customers on what goes into my editing and then I may also start posting some videos and tips for any photographers out there as well that would like to see how I do things on my photos.
I will continue to write posts about this, but let’s talk about nosey’s and toesy’s. ;) Some photographer’s “retouch” by adding a contrast boost to the photo, this is very different than the type of editing I do. Every photographer has their own style, one is not better than the other, just preference. My “style” has become very editorial, what I mean by that is many photos have a “commercial or catalog” feel to them. It is very important to me though that the person in the photo still looks like themselves – it’s not like I’m taking freckles off of faces, that would be a “manipulation”… but okay, many people don’t realize I have lowered their shoulder, taken a little out under the chin or maybe taken in their leg, butt (should I call it “bum”, I never know) or something in a bit… the goal is that even my client, the person in the photo would never know, that it still is “them” but I’m bringing out the best in them. Of course many of those things I just mentioned would NEVER need to be done on a child. ;)
Since I do so much child photography, I am not only taking out runny noses, but yes, I will even pick a boogers – does that make you sick? I’m the one staring at it 10 times the size that it normally would be. ;) It’s not like you would ever think, “I don’t want my kid edited” – they are not in that way, it is their natural beauty, their natural eye color (I never change the actual color of the eyes, just brighten them or put more light in them which changes them just like it would if you were in the sun). The reason you get photos is to capture a moment, in a children shoot I take 600-1000 photos, this is necessary to get CANDID shots, and if you are worrying about wiping their nose every second, the candid shot doesn’t happen. I have even taken out pee from a little girl peeing her pants all down her legs for every edited photo (took hours) as we were in the mountains and there was no change of clothes. For things like that you don’t want to simply “color or paint” in Photoshop over her jeans, then it wouldn’t look realistic, so I got many legs from shots before she peed (is peed a word?) and then used them for the edited shots.
So this post might be incredibly boring to most people reading if you have gotten this far, I just felt it may be interesting for people to realize I’m taking the red veins out of their eyes or lightening them. As far as “toes” goes because this post is called “wiping noses and toeses” (I had to use “toes” because it rhymed with nose, not that the editing on them is anything related). So many little kids especially newborns have bad circulation in their feet and in photos their feet get deep red or purple, in many photos I am matching them to their leg color.
All of the stuff takes tons of time, and when you get a photo from me, you are not going to notice that their feet color is fixed because it just looks natural. You wouldn’t know there was one of one of those cute, crusty little boogies (sorry) up their nose that would have been in the photo because I was laying on the ground or that there was redness in the whites of the eyes because you or a child was tired. And yes I do much more from skin smoothing, bags under the eyes, head swapping, finger nail polish removing, etc. I have taken 50 pounds off of people before but that is another post…
- I have too much editing to do, so don’t have time to proof read this – sorry if there is typos. Oh, and if you are wondering if I will ever post photos again to this blog, yes that is my goal… :)
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