Hopefully, this can be a constructive thread to deal with the issue raised by Eleanor Brown concerning the impact that images, especially unrealistic images, have on women in our image centric society.
So I am kicking this off here, for the purpose of thoughtful discussion.
The thread title "Beauty -- When have we gone too far?" I think summarizes it.
As photographers, we do all sorts of things to arrive at a pleasing image. That is one trap immediately, that is pleasing to who?
When commissioned for a photograph, there are certain expectations on the part of a client. Now that digital is pervasive, most clients expect at least a moderate level of retouching in their images beyond the limits of color, crop, and contrast.
Portraits are one example. I have often been asked to retouch scars, bad blemishes, blotchy skin, rosacea, stray hairs and so forth. The incredible crispness of digital images today taken with our high resolution equipment and our incredibly sharp lenses pretty much captures it all, much too much in most cases. So, it is pretty standard fare to "soften" the skin at least a touch and dial-back some of the detail that we capture.
About a year ago, I started shooting models for my own educational purposes and then some for their portfolios and lately for various commissions. The demand for retouching sharply increased. For some of the models or other clients, a non-retouched was just a "bad" photograph, while a retouched image was a "good" photograph.
So I kick this discussion off with a repeat of the link to Dove's site and an animation demonstrating visually a fairly typical model shot and what I think is expected of me as a photographer. Of course, Aunt Madge gets much less work and the edits would be more of the nature of removing the telephone pole growing out of her head.
Reference link: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com
Have we gone too far?
-bob
So I am kicking this off here, for the purpose of thoughtful discussion.
The thread title "Beauty -- When have we gone too far?" I think summarizes it.
As photographers, we do all sorts of things to arrive at a pleasing image. That is one trap immediately, that is pleasing to who?
When commissioned for a photograph, there are certain expectations on the part of a client. Now that digital is pervasive, most clients expect at least a moderate level of retouching in their images beyond the limits of color, crop, and contrast.
Portraits are one example. I have often been asked to retouch scars, bad blemishes, blotchy skin, rosacea, stray hairs and so forth. The incredible crispness of digital images today taken with our high resolution equipment and our incredibly sharp lenses pretty much captures it all, much too much in most cases. So, it is pretty standard fare to "soften" the skin at least a touch and dial-back some of the detail that we capture.
About a year ago, I started shooting models for my own educational purposes and then some for their portfolios and lately for various commissions. The demand for retouching sharply increased. For some of the models or other clients, a non-retouched was just a "bad" photograph, while a retouched image was a "good" photograph.
So I kick this discussion off with a repeat of the link to Dove's site and an animation demonstrating visually a fairly typical model shot and what I think is expected of me as a photographer. Of course, Aunt Madge gets much less work and the edits would be more of the nature of removing the telephone pole growing out of her head.
Reference link: http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com
Have we gone too far?
-bob
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