Ethical Retouching

How much retouching is too much? The days of darkrooms and challenging negative manipulation have been replaced with programs like Photoshop that allow anyone to make significant changes to a photo in just one or two clicks of a mouse. For the photo above, two clicks and a slider in photoshop added 50 years to my 12 year old son. Of course manipulation rarely takes a subject in that direction, but I thought it made both the point and people giggle.

Last week I watched a fierce online debate over professional photographers use of photoshop. In this case, the photographer had "slimmed" the client without her permission and the client was understandably upset. While nearly every photographer agreed that an immediate apology should be offered, the topic shifted to a discussion about how much manipulation photographers typically perform. Obviously magazines and glamour shoots involve slimming, pore removal, etc. but should these methods be used when you're photographing a family? I was happy to see that even though some photographers admitted to doing a fair amount of retouching, the vast majority put more emphasis on keeping their images real.

So what's my approach? It starts with my getting to know you questionnaire where I ask what you would like to highlight or minimize. That helps me know better how to pose you and what your paint points may be. When it comes to posing, I start by watching how my clients orient themselves. I can often tell what sensitivities they might have just by the way they hold their body. I will keep these in mind when posing clients through each set of photos. When I sit down to edit your images, I cull and go through some color correcting and leave any beauty edits for last. I am not a plastic surgeon and I keep my edits primarily to what's impermanent or what's been asked of me. Before a session, I often get asked about a large pimple or even more common now, a breakout of "maskne." Of course I'll remove pimples, lipstick off of teeth or that scratch your child acquired the morning of your photo session. Those are fleeting things. Finally, if a bulge was caused by my inattention when posing, I might smooth it out. Sometimes we're so in a flow or children are piling on and something rides up... if I could have fixed it at the time, but didn't want to ruin the moment, then it's something I'll consider fixing in post.

I want your photos to truly reflect your life. I want your photos to show the best version of yourself.  

What do you think? What kind of manipulation and retouching do you expect from your photographer?

Edited to add: PetaPixel just published a fantastic article about how photographs were retouched in 1909!