Retouching: from shoot day to your stunning portrait
What happens between your shoot, your previews, and your final photos?
At this point, you’re probably aware that the image in-camera is not the same as the final version you receive. But how is it different? What changes do I, as a photographer, make? And what influence do you have on those decisions? Let’s talk about it.
Your shoot day
I always try to set us up for success on the day of your shoot as I can. For me, that means making you feel comfortable and natural in front of the camera, whether we’re jamming out to some good tunes in the studio, or swapping book recommendations while walking between locations. Buuut it also involves some technical stuff (you know, the skills and knowledge you hired me for!)
My goal is to make sure the images in-camera are as close to the final version as possible. So that looks like:
Making sure my camera settings work with the lighting, whether it’s shifting sunlight or bright studio lights, so that I’m capturing all the information in the highlights and shadows of the image. This helps me later on, as it can be difficult—to the point of having to sacrifice the image!—to bring back that information if it’s too dark or blown out.
Framing the image so that you’re the main focus, not the bright orange traffic cone behind you! While there are many background elements that can help bring a scene to life—customers in a store, paintbrushes in an art studio, people walking down a city sidewalk—I’m working hard to eliminate anything from the frame that would distract rather than add to your story. (This also saves me time in Photoshop later on… a lesson I had to learn the hard way!)
Cleaning up, which can run the gamut from lint-rolling your top to sweeping the ground of dead leaves and cigarette butts to making sure you have a lens wipe for your glasses. It’s the little details that can elevate a photo from good to great!
Now that we’ve captured some great images (and had fun to boot!), it’s time for these photos to enter their next phase.
Post-shoot
I had a brilliant photo teacher who made sure I knew the difference between editing and retouching (thanks, Joe!) Editing is about working with all of the images: culling them down to make sure you’re offering the creme de la creme from the shoot, and polishing the images so they look cohesive and on-brand. Retouching is about digging in deep to each individual photo, adjusting small details so that the photo is the best it can be.
Now you’ll understand what I mean when I say that post-shoot and pre-selection of your final images, I’m only editing your photos.
I bring all of your images into a program that allows me to sort through and remove any images that won’t work for what you need: blinking, mid-facial expression, wind blowing hair into your face, etc. These kinds of images happen every single shoot (we’re human, we need to blink!) so this step happens for everyone.
Once I’ve sifted through those, I begin color correction. Color correction is a mix of reality and style: adjusting exposure and color temperature to make the photo accurate to how the scene looked on your shoot day, while also making small changes to match my bright, warm approach to photography. My aim is for your photos to look cohesive as a set, but also for them to feel like my work, since that’s what helped you decide to hire me as your photographer.
From there, I export the images as previews so you can choose which ones you’d like to have retouched.
Post-selection
My goal with retouching is invisible clean-up. This does involve bringing your images into Photoshop, but Photoshop isn’t a bad word! It’s a super useful program that allows me to make your images the best they can be.
Here are some hard rules I have about retouching:
If it’s permanently on your body–scars, tattoos, etc.–that’s part of what makes you uniquely beautiful, and I won't remove it unless you specifically request me to.
I do not alter body size or shape. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and all of those shapes and sizes are beautiful. As a plus-size woman myself, I think it’s important for all bodies to be seen and celebrated.
But what if you happened to have a breakout on the day of your photo shoot? Or your cat slept on top of the clothes you set out for your shoot and got hair everywhere? Or even your mascara or lipstick smudged a little?
That’s not a problem at all. Like I said before, we’ll try to catch these things on the day of your shoot, but for everything that we don’t, there’s retouching. And that retouching should be imperceptible. If you had dog hair on your pants, after retouching, they’ll look like they normally do (sans hair). If you had acne on the day of your shoot, your final retouched photo will look like your normal skin, as if it were never there.
I’m not here to make you poreless or “perfect”, I’m here to make you look authentically YOU. You are a complex, layered, gorgeous human being. You are your own story. And I’m honored to photograph you.
