On Apr 4, 2005 7:49 AM, John Forbes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've responded to Butch privately on this. What he did, and especially > his explanation of it, is very interesting to me and very helpful. I am a > complete novice at this, and find the huge number of tools available even > in the cut-down versions of PS to be rather intimidating. It is good to > see some specific examples of what can be done in a real-world case. >
I must admit, my feelings about the "cleansing" of your model, John, likely have to do with what I try to do with my photography: at the rist of sounding completely pretentious (who, me? <LOL>), I try to capture reality. That means capturing whatever I'm photographing, warts, wrinkles and all. Not that I ~look~ for those things, but if they're there, and they end up on film, they're in my photograph. Not to perpetuate a silly comparison made a few weeks ago, but some may remember that a most respected list member dared to mention Diane Arbus and your humble servant in the same breath. I must confess to not being all that familiar with her work (I mean, I've leafed through a few of her books, but that's about it). However, one of the things I've heard said about her is that she seemed to go looking for the warts; that she went out of her way to present her subjects in a less than flattering light. I don't think I do that, but neither do I try to enhance what's in the viewfinder. So, all this silly rambling is to try to explain why sometimes I don't pick up on the nuances of stuff like fashion photography or some types of portraiture (like glamour stuff). It's all foreign to me, so I'm slow on the uptake. To further ramble, all of the above is my verbose (who, me? <LOL>) way of saying that I didn't mean to criticise either Mr. Black or his photo as being ethically unsound. As I told Butch off-list, my reaction may have been much different had I not been shown the "original" version, and only seen the "improved" version. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
