Has The Retouching Arms Race Gone Too Far?

retouching example
In this photo I reduced the wrinkles around the eyes, whitened the teeth and smoothed out her skin - Too much?

Has the retouching arms race gone too far? That’s a question a group of scientists are asking and they’ve developed a new metric for rating photos on a scale of 1 to 5, depending on how much retouching the photograph has received.

It’s not enough anymore to have fantastic cameras, a portrait lens that could inspire glass lust, and a high end lighting setup. Today we need even more.

Photoshop plugins like Portraiture and stand alone products like Portrait Professional now make what were once time-consuming alterations to portraits little more than point and click.

Health organizations are increasingly concerned that the photography profession is pushing an unrealistic standard. We could argue at length whether the main driver is the photographer’s drive for perfection or client demands, but I think we have to own up to at least a contributory role.

It all started innocently enough, just using the clone tool to mask the zit here, the small blemish there, and maybe fill in that chipped tooth just a tad. Later that grew into smoothing out the skin tones. Plugins popped up to make it all as easy a few clicks of the mouse. It wasn’t long before we were making the eyes bigger, making the eye color brighter, slimming the jaw line, making the neck longer. We could take inches off a waist or pounds off of hips and customers loved us for it. It was all very gradual and we were praised by clients and peers every step of the way.

Now the question is have we become guilty of creating a Frankenstein’s monster of perfection unattainable by mere mortals?

If you’ve ever worked with real, paid, high-end models, you already know there isn’t a lot of Photoshop required. You’re dealing with the top 1 to 2 percent of people in the entire population; you’re playing in the shallow end of the gene pool. They make their living looking good and with a good makeup artist they are the real deal.

But with software to the rescue we can gain near perfect regardless of the physical form we start with. We don’t need a top model anymore, we can pull any waif off the street, bad skin, bad teeth, bad hair, no makeup and make them look like a supermodel.

So now Professor Hany Farid and Eric Kee, computer scientists at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, are set to rat us out. About to publish a set of tools that analyze how much retouching has gone into a photo. Soon the world will know if her eyes are really that color of if they were punched up post. If her skin really that smooth or if it’s an adjustment layer.

So, what do you think? Do we deserve to be outed? Has the retouching arms race gone too far without a discussion about whether we’re setting unrealistic standards?

I’ve seen portraits worked so much in post they look fake, like a mannequin.  Somewhere in between there has to be a happy medium.

Full Frame vs Crop Sensor

Canon 5d mk ii
The Canon 5D MK II has a full frame sensor and a recently reduced price tag

The discussion of a full frame DSLR versus a crop sensor (APS-C) camera just got more interesting when B&H Photo decided to offer an eye-popping discount on the Canon 5D MK II, offering the body-only with a 16 GB CF card for under $2,000 around Christmas (now back up to $2500).

While I can live without a full frame sensor, the concepts of “need” and “want” become jumbled at times, like when B&H offers a big discount on a full frame camera that I wanted anyway. So, it’s good to go back over the differences and remember why you select one over the other.

First, it might be good to understand where the term “full frame” comes from in the first place. Full frame means the camera’s image sensor is roughly the same size as 35mm film, or 24mm x 36mm. That, my friends, is a big sensor. And, when it comes to sensors, size matters.

Interestingly, one of the reasons you frequently find a Canon 7D being used on a movie set like Black Swan, instead of a full frame Canon 5D MK II, is because the APS-C chip also approximates a film stock used widely in motion picture production called academy 4-perf. PL movie lenses cover 16mm x 22mm and take a wild guess how big an APS-C sensor is? If you guessed 13.8mm x 20.7mm, you were cheating.

The bottom line is a Canon 7D with a PL mount can accommodate all those marvelous movie lenses. There’s even a place that will permanently alter your 7D to be a PL mount movie camera!

It’s More Than Physical

The physical difference between the sensors is significant, with the full frame sensor being closer to twice as large. That is both good and bad depending on the circumstances. Since big chips are harder to manufacture and have a higher defect rate, they are vastly more expensive. So, if your wallet has anything to say about your camera selection, you’ll likely end up with an APS-C camera.

sensor size
You can see the APS-C chip is slightly less than half the size of a full frame 35mm sensor

The payoff for the extra cost of a full frame sensor is in the detail you get and the low light performance. At ISOs above 1600 a Canon 5D will simply blow the doors off my 7D. Even though I don’t do that much low light shooting, that’s my excuse for wanting a 5D MK II.

Also, if you’re shooting a lot of landscapes or other fine detail, a full frame camera will provide better resolution at distance.

Notice the qualifier “at distance”. Up close, like in a studio setting, the difference will be extremely difficult to notice with the biggest differences introduced by the quality of the lenses.

What Strange Magic Is This?

It’s not magic, just that at studio and portrait distances a full frame camera is shooting largely on the center of the sensor and you’ll likely be cropping out the edges anyway. That’s why I can shoot studio shots side-by-side with my friends owning 5D MK II’s and they’re surprised to see very little difference in our final shots. However, were we to walk across the street to the beach and shoot some landscapes, they would remember why the extra money was worth it.

That’s why it’s important for people to have an idea of what kind of photography they want to do before selecting their gear. Buying the camera before figuring out your photographic specialty is the tail wagging the dog.

My decision to go with a 7D is because most of my work is as a PJ. Lots of run and gun, a lot of being bumped, dumped and jostled, and occasionally working in the elements. An armor-plated crop sensor camera is well suited to that type of work, plus I shoot a lot of video.

I was perfectly happy with my APS-C crop sensor…until B&H put the full frame 5D MK II on sale. Curse you, B&H, curse you. 😉

Photography Type Influences Gear Choices

long lens photo
Photojournalists and nature photographers are the most likely to invest in big glass

I get a lot of questions every week about what kind of camera to buy and what gear someone new to the business would want to have in their bag. I almost always have to answer those questions with another question of my own: What type of photography interests you the most?

For sure there will be quite a bit of overlap between fields. A photojournalist might find they have a lot of equipment in common with a wedding photographer. In fact, one style of wedding photography is sometimes referred to as “journalistic”. Other than the occasional overlap, most fields of photography will employ specialized equipment unique to that field. So your area of interest will influence how you spend your gear budget.

When it comes to cameras, that will be dictated more by your budget, but these days with modern DSLRs it’s far more likely a single camera can be used across different photography fields.

Portrait Photography

Portrait photographers are going to sink the most money into lighting and lenses. While portrait photographers are probably going to want a camera with a full frame sensor like the Canon 5D MK II or Nikon D700, it’s not a requirement. You can shoot perfectly good portraits with almost any camera, full frame or crop sensor.

For portraits lighting will be key and portrait photographers are more likely to invest big bucks in strobes and floor lighting.

Portrait photographers, along with DSLR video shooters, are also more likely to invest in prime lenses. Even though zoom lens quality is more than adequate for portraits today, shooting portraits is all about consistency, and for that primes are hard to beat.

Wedding Photography

Again, wedding photographers will likely employ a high end DSLR with either a full frame or crop sensor, the biggest differences will be the lenses and lighting.

A wedding photographer will almost certainly be using a high end zoom lens and, instead of floor lighting, will be investing their money in external portable lighting instead of studio lights.

Photojournalists

PJs will need to be light and fast and they’ll favor lenses at both extremes. For working close in a crowd they’ll use the wide end of the scale and for sporting events and event coverage, they’ll have extremely long and very expensive glass.

If PJs carry a flash at all it will be compact, as they’re more likely to favor faster lenses and cameras with bigger sensors for shooting in low light than rely on flash units.

For PJs it’s all about the speed and the weight.

That’s one of the reasons photography questions are so hard to answer. The type of photography you choose will make a big difference in equipment selection.

The Hazards of Photgraphy

rock climbing photo
The best pictures are at the top. Ready? Go! - By Michele Campeotto

There’s a big difference between doing anything as a hobby and doing it as a career. That applies to a lot of activities but particularly to photography.

Not only do you have to take amazing photos, the kind of pictures that make people go, “Wow!” but you have to be good at business, understand contracts and be willing to go to incredible lengths for photos.

Anyone who thinks making a living as a photographer is easy is most likely a hobbyist dreaming of going pro or in another line of work.

Just in my own experience I have been punched, elbowed, tripped, jostled and spit on and those are just the ones I can attribute to other photographers. I’ve been threatened with arrest, more than once, teargassed even though it was aimed in another direction, camped in the pouring rain, had frozen feet from standing in ice cold mountain streams, been lost in the wilderness, pitched around in a helicopter, gotten food poisoning, been air sick and so seasick I had to alternate between throwing up and taking pictures. I could have easily ended up at the bottom of a cliff buried under a backpack full of camera gear on several occasions. Yet, compared to these guys working for National Geographic, I’ve had it easy.

If that isn’t bad enough, you’re also dealing with a business climate of continuously diminishing opportunities and constant pressure from low-price competitors. Very few organizations are hiring photographers and the few that are have a massive amount of talent to choose from.

Many companies that were traditional sources of contracts for photographers are now buying their photography from stock photo and microstock photography agencies. Even those agencies are being challenged by services like TwitPics, which reserves the right to sell images without compensation.

And, through all that, you still have to take pictures, even when you don’t feel like it.

I’m not trying to rain on any dreams of becoming a photographer, just trying to inject some reality into the dream. You’re not going to get there with a Nikon and a kit lens and it’s going to be a constant fight to make ends meet.

On the other hand, when it all does come together and you get one of those photos that changes the world, all the struggle seems worthwhile.

Five Things I Wish I’d Known About Photography

pro photographer
Don't expect to luck into jobs like this - by Starscream

A lot of people dream about being professional golfers. Imagine getting paid millions and traveling around the country doing nothing but play golf! Here’s all you have to do to make that dream come true. Start when you’re 5, so go tell your daddy or mommy that you want to be a pro golfer. Then spend the next 10 years with a parent driving you relentlessly and whenever you’re not doing anything else, be outside hitting balls. Then spend the next 8 years with a series of coaches honing every facet of your golf game, driving you relentlessly and then you stand less than a 50-50 chance of making the cut in the junior tournaments.

Professional golf isn’t something people pick up on a weekend, it’s a lifestyle they started when they were young and it’s a job they work every day towards. Photography is not that different.

To be a professional, photography has to be more than a hobby, more than something you do on the weekend. It’s a competitive business that is a demanding, fast-moving professional field that is getting more and more competition from people walking around with smartphones and low-end digital cameras.

Here are five things I wish someone had told me about the business years ago.

You Have To Know How To Run a Business

Take classes in how to run a small business. You have to understand taxes, billing, cash flow, insurance and contracts. You can’t be a successful photographer without knowing how to be a successful business person.

It Will Take a Long Time To Make Any Money

Wedding photographers can sometimes build up a steady income in a couple years but don’t count on it. Mainly figure on starving the first few years until you have a deep portfolio and build up a client base.

I’ve known a few people who managed to claw their way to a living shooting commercial stock photography, but it took them a few years to build up that kind success. The advantage to specializing in stock photography is that once you build up your income, it’s recurring revenue.

Once you have a base of income, you can use that to branch out and experiment.

There Is New Competition Every Year

Just when you claw and starve your way to some kind of a living, you’ll find one day that clients start telling you about someone offering the services you’ve been providing for less than half of what you’re charging. While that happens in almost any business, in photography it tends to be particularly devastating.

You have to spend a lot of time monitoring your market, checking on your competition and staying one step ahead.

You Trade Regular Hours For Working All The Time

Being a photographer means trading the security of a regular paycheck for being an independent businessperson. In other words, you trade regular hours for working all the time. And some assignments take the concept of working hours to new and bizarre extremes.

I don’t know any professional photographer who doesn’t work all the time, nights and weekends included.

You Will Need a Emergency Fund

At some point it’s going to happen: You will get sick, hurt, sued or, in the case of PJ, arrested. When that happens you’ll need an emergency fund to get through it. Even if you prevail in court, you can still end up being out of business.

If you’re injured and can’t work, you have to have enough cash in the bank to keep the doors open and pay the bills.

Photography as a business is a job and you have to approach it that way. If it’s not a job you eat, sleep and breath, you’re going to have  a hard time makeing it.