Retouching - You get what you pay for

I wanted to do a quick post to try to help everyone out there make a more informed decision as far as who they hire for their photo needs. There are a lot of options in the marketplace and everyone has their selling points and their strong suit.

One thing that photographers have more or less been forced to learn over the past decade is how to digitally retouch their images. In the past these edits were done in the dark room, either by a photographer, or by a person they trusted at their photo lab. However, as you all know, in the 21st century things are a bit different.

When you are booking a photographer and they are going to be retouching the photos you are purchasing, it is always a good idea to look at their work and see the quality of work they do. It might even be wise to ask for an example of a before/after image so that you can really see just what they are capable of doing.

I was recently on a headshot photographer's website and I found this image:


Right off the bat I felt like there was something fishy with the image. The right side of his face has a jagged line and looked lumpy to the naked eye. My first thought was that it might just have been because they image was too large and the web person shrank it to fit on the site. So I clicked on the image and opened it in a new window. I was floored by what I saw.



The person doing the retouching simply blurred the entire face, and erased the blur filter over the eyes and mouth!!!!



You can see around the eye, the eyebrow was completely blurry, and on the image before that you can't even tell where the nose ends and the cheek begins!!
Here is the image so you can see for yourself just how terrible this looks: click here

This is not "retouching".

And frankly I would be embarrassed to give this final image to any of my clients.

Take a look at an image I did a few weeks ago. The first image is "before" and the second is "after" retouching.



You can see a difference between the images, just in the color balance and the overall look.
But where you really see the time I spent on the image is when you look closer. (the pixelazation is a result of saving the images as gif files for the purpose of animation)




So you can see I didn't just throw a big blur over the entire image, I took about 2 hours and dealt with every wrinkle and blemish on an individual level. The goal isn't to make a person look like they are an alien, with no wrinkles and completely smooth skin all over their face. The goal is to minimize wrinkles and blemishes. Obviously a person doesn't live to be 40, 50, or 60 without having a single wrinkle on their face. That would look absurd.

I hope this helps anyone out there who is looking at photographers. The final product you get is no longer just dependent on a photographer's skill with a camera.

Home for the Holidays

I am in North Carolina visiting with my sister and parents for a bit. Although I don't consider NC to be "home", I must say it is good to be here. Mostly because of the family aspect. But also because it is a huge change of pace and a change of scenery. And who wouldn't look forward to being surrounded by people who love them.

Right before I left I had the crazy idea to stay up late and watch the lunar eclipse from Dallas, TX.
I didn't have it in me to wait for the entire thing to be over before going to bed, but I did give it about 90 minutes and a 4Gb memory card. At first the images were just coming out a big blur, as the clouds were obstructing the moon. But I took a little drive to a nearby softball field and set up the tripod again and got some pretty great shots. Here is one of my favorites:


I think I went to bed around 3am. The following morning came early as I had to be at the airport for my flight. Chicago, my connecting airport, was a snowy, foggy disaster, so my flight was delayed over an hour leaving Dallas, but I still made it. Amazingly so did my luggage!!

Monday night was the last time I had my camera in my hand, and it feels rather weird. I have been dying to photograph something all day, but don't really have anything available.
My sister expressed a desire to get some new photos done, so I will more than likely be shooting some of her while I'm here, but the date and time is still undecided.
One of my favorite photos in my portfolio is of my sister and she has made several appearances on my website over the past few years.
For those of you who didn't know, this is her:


I don't have anything as nice as the Mediterranean Sea at my disposal, as I did with this photo, but I think we can pull something off :-)

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas, hopefully with loved ones.
I will write again when I have a few minutes!

Some cool photos

Good evening everyone.
I thought I would make good on my promise to write more on my blog. Tonight I am coming to you live from our nation's capital. That's right, I'm in Washington D.C.. It is pretty awesome being here and seeing all this history. I've never really considered myself to be that much of a history junkie, but this stuff is really interesting. There is more to do than I even have time to think about, and unfortunately we are here for a convention so there isn't much time left to see the sights or shoot photos.

Tonight we went on an open top bus tour - one of those lovely touristy things. It drove us all around the capital. Most of it was after dark though as we didn't get done setting up for the next few days until almost 5:30.

Here are two shots I took tonight that I like.





That's it from me for now, I have been up since 4am CST! Busy day traveling!
I'm here till Wednesday though, so hopefully I'll be able to get some more photos soon!

Take care!

Time Whizzes by

I thought I'd update everyone on what has been going on for the past few weeks.
Obviously I have more than dropped the ball when it comes to keeping the blog updated. Something I'm planning on working on more frequently, as I actually do enjoy writing.

October is shaping up to the busiest month this year so far. By a long shot. It's almost like 2010 decided to concentrate itself all into one month.
2 weddings, a workshop or two, an annual report, some interior photos, lots of marketing, maybe a few head shots, sprinkled in with a touch of shameless self-promotion.

I have a series of Downtown Dallas photos that I have been building on over the past four months or so. I have them all over on the Radiant Squares Facebook page (There's that shameless self promotion I was talking about...).

Here are a few I have been rather pleased with:






For more you can check out the albums called "The Dallas Project" and "Abstract Dallas".

I've been teaching more lately as well. Had a few one-on-ones with some people, trying to help them figure out how to properly work their camera. I know a lot of other people have been asking me to sit down with them, so maybe that can turn into a monthly thing. If you have a dSLR and would like to learn more about using it, or if you would like to learn some tricks and techniques for taking good photographs, please feel free to drop me a line and we can start getting that taken off of your to-do list!

My sister is also in town for a few days, which normally would turn into an automatic portraits session, but we are both really busy with work and I don't think we will have time for that - unfortunately.

Well, that's it for now. I will talk to you all soon!
Be on the lookout for the Radiant Squares monthly newsletter which will be coming out soon.
If you are not signed up yet, there is a link on the home page of www.radiantsquares.com where you can sign up.

I hope you all have a great week!

Posting is fun

I have been meaning to start posting more frequently. Obviously I am failing. For this I apologize.

I returned from a "run and gun" trip to Arizona about 2 weeks ago now. Although in my mind it seems like it was only 2 days ago.
We pulled a 20 hour day the first day, of which 8 were spent traveling, 7 were spent shooting, and 2 were spent downloading images and recharging batteries. Bed time was 11:30 pacific.

We shot a lot of different parts of the hospital, spending about an hour on each shot, which isn't a whole lot. One of the reasons the client said she booked us is because she knew most photographers could not complete the number of shots she had in the time period allotted.

Here is the O.R.



Here is a great shot which will be used to show the level of care and compassion people can expect at the new hospital.



And here is one of the doctors



Wake up call was for 5:30am the following morning.

On the agenda for day 2:
- sunrise shot of the exterior
- head shots of the board members
- detail shots
- lobby shot
- reception shot
- sunset shot

To be continued...