Monday, March 20, 2006

Not Sure...


There are many things in life I'm not sure of. I guess we all have doubts over one thing or another at different times in our lives. Like most people I do wonder if I am on the right path, I think I am 99% of the time but sometimes (occasionally, less and less often) I start losing footing, start doubting.

I chose to go the route of more artsy portrait work. I find studio stuff to be mostly boring. Even portrait artists I totally love and admire can only do SO much in the studio. Most of the cool stuff is behind the scenes in Photoshop (don't let anyone tell you that some of these picture effects are all camera. The camera can only do so much, most portrait artists have a bit of help via their learned talent/knowledge in Photoshop. I will never state that images out of the camera are perfect, EVERY image gets something from Photoshop. Be it hair removal, tinting (some call it hand tinting because many times although you do it in Photoshop you are touching up every miniscule detail to make it look a certain way).

Anyway...I have a point here. I mentioned to a very good friend of mine, a photographer out of Virginia, that I wonder what I love more. Photoshopping things or the actual photography process. Look at me, spilling secrets, but it's awesome to take an image that is pretty unimpressive, perhaps it is technically ok, but then to make that image SING is pretty cool.

So that's that.

I have an image, a newer technique that I am tweaking and I cannot decide if I love or hate it. Often I'll throw these techniques on a duplicate image in a client's proofing session. Usually my client's love the newer stuff, one of my clients said to me (it was her 2nd session with me, the first time we photographed her 3 month old, the second time we did the baby at 9 months): "You can forever experiment on me! I love what you come up with!!"

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