40 is Beautiful

France made the news a few months ago for a proposed law that has been photoshopped, airbrushed or edited in some manner.  Without going into a long-winded explanation, this proposed law is utterly hilarious to any photographer (and utterly terrifying at the same time).  Every image beyond a snapshot is “edited in some manner”.  That’s what photographers do.  That’s why we get paid the big bucks (so to speak).

Proper lighting, camera angle, cropping the photo, dodge & burn, tweaking saturation, adding filters; all of these things are “editing the image” so as to present something different from what the human eye would see.

That being said:  I, personally, feel that editing tools such as Photoshop are drastically overused–and even abused.  Ignoring the excessive examples, the philosophy of “just photoshop it” is entirely too pervasive in modern photography.  We’ve come to expect skin without wrinkles or pores, every hair in perfect place, snow-white teeth, and wrinkle-free clothing.   We expect plastic people.

I don’t do that.

Yes, I tweak images to highlight certain features, but I don’t “paint” a new image over the top of what’s there.  People have wrinkles and texture to their skin.  Hair isn’t plastic.  Teeth don’t shine out like headlights on luxury car.

Images from me will not be airbrushed, they will not be photoshopped.   They will not paint an image of someone you aren’t.  What they will do is strive to bring out the best of who you actually are.

After all… when someone sees your photo and says “Wow!  She’s gorgeous!” don’t you want them to be looking at you, and not at some digitally-adjusted plastic painting of someone who only kind of looks like you?