Troubleseeker

Editing == Magic?

Often, when reviewing my portfolio and looking at my pictures I ask myself what is going on in people’s heads when they see the picture. Will they enjoy the picture and be captivated by it or will they be too preoccupied with the thought of how it was made?

The final picture
(Ioana for Next – MA:CoverModels)

I am just gonna take a random picture here that I finished editing from a recent shoot. There are a couple of things that could be criticized about this photograph if you want to be petty. Regardless, I like the result and it should be good enough to serve as an example.

Editing a picture like this is really straightforward: removing blemishes, burning, dodging, adjusting levels for key areas and toning it.

Details (50% zoom)

To me, the key is that the picture will look good in a large print – thus paying attention to details (e.g. skin texture) is crucial. At the same time I like to leave several imperfections in for the picture to not look all too lifeless and eery.

You might have noticed that the eyes are still fairly dark. Yes, it’s pretty easy to light up the eyes, bring out the colour of the iris, yada yada. But here is the point: don’t just automate every picture through a set of processing steps.

just because you can, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it always

..and that applies to every step of the editing process.

The Original
ISO200, 60mm, f/8.0, 1/200 sec

This is the original picture as it came straight out of the camera. I just set up two lights (a daylight calibrated light from the top and a slightly cooler calibrated light from the bottom). And it may come to some as a surprise but the original photograph is often pretty close to what the final result looks like.