Light it shoot it retouch it, the three steps in modern photography.

Light it shoot it retouch it, the three steps in modern photography.

In today's productions the last stage can take something quite ordinary to amazing.

The retouch process allows you to be picking about the angle of this or that, I suggest a watch of The September Issue a great documentary about the production and behind the scenes of making the annual big issue of Vogue, The September Issue.

The relationships and dedication in the Vogue team to producing amazing imagery is an insight worth watching.

The relevant section in the film to this blog being the discussions about the front cover between Mario Testino and Vogue people.

This is not to say the work gone into shooting isn't great to need retouching. There is a place for the re-toucher and that is in the ability to create tweak and delivery on the creative vision of the photographer or client.

The perfect image, maybe.

Forget the phrase post production, it's retouching done in Photoshop that simple, there are huge skills in that area.

Forget blur for skin enhancing and now think cleaning up at pixel level

 

I have heard in the past photographers say oh my images are all in camera and it just wasn't true, there is only so much drama you can create between ISO, shutter speed and DoF.

So how much time does it take to produce the cover of Vogue, in terms of time resources something like two days retouching by one or more re-touchers and a final bill of around $10,000.

Light it shoot it retouch it.

Buy it, watch it http://www.theseptemberissue.com/