I am a professional photographer with a small studio. I do retouch protraits but only making sure colors are correct and removing blemishes(most times lighting does it for me)I do nothing
to change the individual. I was appalled a few ago when a school picture company, with out my checking the box for retouching, retouched my daughters school picture and botched it
making a minor flaw in one ear more noticable. It was something we had never made a big
deal about or even her peers. She really didn't know she had it until they botched her photo
trying to cover it up. It so horrified me I only get the smallest package so she get a class pic.
We generally throw the other images away as I take her school pictures now. It was very
traumatic but as shows the ineptnes of those companies to regulate their employees and
follow their own order sheets.
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Say ‘Cheese!’ And Now Say ‘Airbrush!’
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Once upon a time, retouching a photo was "an art in and of itself," requiring a paintbrush, a steady hand and a lot of time, says Mike Cofer, an Oklahoma photographer who has been in the portrait business for 28 years. "When I was growing up they offered 'retakes'," says Pam Carden, a 40-year-old mother of two in Brooklyn, N.Y. "I begged my mom to let me have them taken one year, because I wanted to die when I saw how stupid my smile was in the original shot. I had the pictures retaken, then realized halfway through the day that I'd worn my sweater backward! I will never live that down, and I'm happy about it."
But the shift from film to digital media has made it easier, faster and more routine to clean up and "perfect" faces and figures. Buy a digital camera, and it comes with retouching elements. Anyone can learn how to use Photoshop to blend and tighten and thin. And that creates "a culture of kids who are being socialized to unrealistic images," according to Cornell University historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of "The Body Project," which looks at the diaries of teenage girls from the 1820s through the 1980s. "Girls internalize this form of self-criticism and say, 'I don't look like that.' But in reality nobody looks like that," Brumberg explained in an interview with NEWSWEEK last year.
For the most part, professional photo agencies that do school portraits try to keep retouching to a minimum: they don't change body shape or facial structure. But out of the dozen or so companies contacted by this reporter, all offered some minimal adjustments, like erasing blemishes or fixing stray hairs. And a quick Google search will yield an excess of companies who will gladly airbrush everything a nitpicky parent's heart desires.
One, called Natural Beauties, touts a "total makeover" package for tots that includes restyled hair, blended skin, added makeup, reshaped eyebrows, enhanced eyelashes-even changed facial expressions. And then, of course, the photos are cropped and sharpened. (The site's owner, Alycia Collins, who specializes in pageant photos, declined to comment.) "Retouching was always meant for problems like a bump or a scrape, but it's gotten to be a vanity," says Stephens. "Kids don't need to look like a model in a magazine." Sure, but do they know that?
© 2008
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