Well
darlings, it is time for our second lesson on editing. I am sorry it
was posted a little late tonight, I had social obligations that were
just too much fun to pull myself away. I hope you can forgive me.
Just have a cold drink and a long read...
To edit
things well is a skill I do not lay claim to in the least. I am
fairly good at smoothing skin tone when redness appears. I can
brighten, balance lighting, and fix backdrop issues. I can even
clone out problem spots and heavy make-up lines when there was no way
to pose around the problem. But I also know when to call in a
professional.
When it
comes to large shoots and orders I will often select a few items that
I feel are the strongest candidates for making a real dazzling image
with a little technical TLC. Even with weddings, I don't edit every
image, I just ensure that I take out the ones that have no business
in an album and make sure there are some true gems for the bride and
groom (and family) to display. The rest get a once over to make sure
they are not too dark, too light, or too blurry to be of any use.
Why am I
pointing these things out? Because the very first rule of editing
well is this:
KNOW
YOUR LIMITS
The
worst thing you can ever do as a professional is promise perfection.
Those creamy skinned models with the pouty lips and big dark lashed
eyes, they don't even look like that with full make-up and hair.
There is a massive amount of work put into the ads we see, and a
massive falsehood behind those same ads. As photographers, we should
not be trying to feed into those visual lies; it only makes our jobs
harder.
If
you are good with lighting and poses but not always fantastic with
editing, that is alright. There is a huge sub-industry of digital
editing gurus willing to help reduce your time spent on each shot,
and who have honed their skills to perform the final touch-ups. I
suggest finding a good retoucher as a fall back for when you are in a
seasonal crunch or have a large order to complete. Weddings are
something I use outside assistance for, and I do not feel it detracts
from the work I do even in the slightest. Clients receive their
proofs or prints faster, I am free to shoot more sessions in the
following weeks, and my business sees benefits rather than costs.
This
cost/ benefit portion can be seen in the next rule as well, though in
a slightly different area:
UNDERSTAND HOW TO SAY NO
I
am a people pleasing kind of person. I go out of my way to make
others comfortable with my studio, my work, and do everything I can
to ensure they get the outcome they want... everything within reason,
anyway...
When
an older customer (and even some younger ones) come in I always try
to get an understanding of how they would like to look. As I said
before, I am no expert when it comes to editing, but I also know that
there is a line that does need to be drawn. You need to understand
that saying no does not make you unreasonable; rather, it makes your
clients have to question what it is they imagine themselves looking
like in the end.
A
client once had me do a sitting for her and requested I shoot her
posed at a specific angle and in an unflattering outfit. She
was not an unattractive woman, but she did have some extra weight and
was a had a noted jowl-line.
She also explained that she had
to see everything
before I edited or deleted “the best ones”.
After expressing my concern at how the images might not turn out to
her liking or that I would only delete items not at all suited to
framing or printing, I was told in very firm terms that those were
the things she wanted. Because this was one of my first sittings as
a self-employed photographer and money was a driving factor, I took
the shots. To this day, I am not proud of that session. After
uploading everything, fixing the problems from poor lighting, and
cleaning up the edges of some shots it was time to show her the
preliminary results so she could choose what she wanted. She
insulted every one and complained that I
had made her look fat and old.
I took the abuse, spent almost four hours editing her choices down
to show a slender (which she was not) woman with just a few scant
laugh lines and a light weight to the jaw to show she was aging well.
Even after all that work, she called me to complain that she looked
old and ugly. I am sure now that nothing short of removing 20 years
or so would have pleased her. When I brought her prints out to her
home to drop them off I did notice a very telling little sign; all
her other photos only showed her prior to being married or having
children. From her comments in our consultation, she had been
widowed after nearly thirty years and had three grown children living
scattered around the country and was sending these prints to both
them and her college aged grand-children.
I
still have the photos from that session stored on my back-up drives.
I keep them to remind myself that there are limits, and then there
are impossibilities. I also keep them to remind myself that there
are times we need to remember to say no.
No,
I will not give you blond hair and blue eyes if you are a brunette
with browns. No, I will not inflate your chest to supermodel
proportion if you are under age and cannot supply a very good reason.
No, I will not use my non-existent magic wand to make you into a
person that is not real. No, I am not a therapist; but I will do
everything in my power to make you like or even love who you are and
how you look without having to resort to a computer-age lie. Yes, I
believe that honesty in photography is best.. and that there is such
thing as “beautiful ugly”.
This
brings us to the last point I will make tonight. And yes, this is the one with pictures:
STAY TRUE TO YOUR STYLE
I
am not a fan of overly enhanced eyes. This is a trend lately in
magazines and popular photography that I just cannot find it in
myself to like. For this reason, my style
does not show intense eye colors. I have dabbled in this style, done
a bunch of training and some testing, but I think the results are
just not up to par with what clients have come to expect from me.
I
work very well with unique lighting and color contrasts. Years of
painting, working with stained glass, and sketching with oil pastels
finally paid off when I became a photographer. I learned how to pair
bold and muted colors with specific skin tones for an exotic look. I
used a blend of light and bright hues to help play tricks on the eye
to tailor a shape for seduction. I figured out hundreds of fun ways
to work a single remnant of patterned silk into newborn photos that
captured just the right combination of warmth without being
over-powering. I even learned how to fake my way around a horrible
fake tan and turn it into a summery bronze glow.
I
also know when something should remain untouched. This last skill to
far longer to learn, and involved many failures along the way. It is
a simple fact that on rare occasion, perfect in already there, and
all we need to do in snap the photo. In those moments, I feel most
like an “artist”, and less like a photographer. Nowhere is this
more obvious, than in the photos I take of my own family, most of all... my son when he was a newborn.
