Having been influenced by The Graduate at an early age, I am an old hippie who is fond of the way mature women look. Monday evening, I shot some portraits intended to be used on a client's website, including the business' owner, Susan.
The website promotes educational services, and features warm, sunny pictures of smiling teenagers with perfect skin. Susan is in her mid-fifties, blond and has spent most of her life in the Arizona sunshine, so her face is deeply lined and textured. Although she indicated to me that she did not want to use make-up for her photos, I wanted her photo to match the style already used on the website.
She gave me, literally five minutes of her time to shoot, so I worked fast and spent much of that time encouraging her to smile, then to smile less. I picked the exposure with the best expression and extracted this monochrome (channel mixer R:G:B:C -80:80:102:-2) version that isolates the facial lines and skin texture:
Then I made a smoothed out version, by filling the lines and shadows in by hand with the the clone, dodge, healing and history brushes; as well as pumping up the yellows and blues with the Hue/Saturation control to get a sunny look:
Since this was for the web, the final image was resized and smoothed with Grain Surgery and sharpened. I think Susan gives 1967's Ann Bancroft a run for her money:
For comparison, here is the same picture 'straight out of the camera', without the 'digital botox':
My dilemma is, have I gone too far in altering reality? Considering the aesthetic constraint (matching a youthful look on the website), have I done the right thing?
My second question is, have I done the thing right? I never want my pictures to look like anyone else would have done them, but are there things I should have done to improve my rendition of this altered reality?
Please be 'brutal' in your "critique", but don't make me cry. I used an 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor with bounced flash at f/2 and iso 200 if it makes a difference.
The website promotes educational services, and features warm, sunny pictures of smiling teenagers with perfect skin. Susan is in her mid-fifties, blond and has spent most of her life in the Arizona sunshine, so her face is deeply lined and textured. Although she indicated to me that she did not want to use make-up for her photos, I wanted her photo to match the style already used on the website.
She gave me, literally five minutes of her time to shoot, so I worked fast and spent much of that time encouraging her to smile, then to smile less. I picked the exposure with the best expression and extracted this monochrome (channel mixer R:G:B:C -80:80:102:-2) version that isolates the facial lines and skin texture:
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Then I made a smoothed out version, by filling the lines and shadows in by hand with the the clone, dodge, healing and history brushes; as well as pumping up the yellows and blues with the Hue/Saturation control to get a sunny look:
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Since this was for the web, the final image was resized and smoothed with Grain Surgery and sharpened. I think Susan gives 1967's Ann Bancroft a run for her money:
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
For comparison, here is the same picture 'straight out of the camera', without the 'digital botox':
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
My dilemma is, have I gone too far in altering reality? Considering the aesthetic constraint (matching a youthful look on the website), have I done the right thing?
My second question is, have I done the thing right? I never want my pictures to look like anyone else would have done them, but are there things I should have done to improve my rendition of this altered reality?
Please be 'brutal' in your "critique", but don't make me cry. I used an 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor with bounced flash at f/2 and iso 200 if it makes a difference.