Retouching newborn, location and family photographs
RETOUCHING NEWBORN/ location and family IMAGES AND WHY PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY IS A LUXURY PRODUCT/THE SERVICE YOU ARE PAYING FOR.
Often people admire professional newborn photographs on the wall and ask me why their images don’t look the same when they uploaded onto their computers, social media or even printed. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the complex process behind professional photography, why the pictures are so different and what you are paying for.
Professional photography is extremely intricate. It starts off with the technical aspects of lighting and positioning as well as determining which is the best camera and lens to use and more importantly how to manipulate your manual camera to create the effect you want. This knowledge is acquired through intensive and meticulous training and comes from years of experience.
This initial stage of photography is arguably the most significant. If you can capture the perfect photograph, with supreme lighting and composition in each shot, then your post production will be far easier AND the end result will be spectacular.
Realistically, there are always things that we cannot control. You might have a newborn that has scratched itself or has baby acne, which only lasts around 2 weeks. They may even have a cradle cap or dribble that you may want to remove. Professional photographers would definitely recommend that these things are retouched out, as they are temporary and not always how you would want to remember your baby in their first few weeks.
IS RETOUCHING A LOT OF WORK?
Yes, it definitely is, especially if it is done properly. The easy way is to just smooth out the problem but that makes your baby look flat and doll-like. If you want to achieve the best result, this involves carefully removing one spot at a time, not affecting the area/skin next to it. This is very time consuming but gives you the best end result.
Another aspect to consider is if there is more than one person in the photograph, then each person in that photo would need to be retouched too. Sometimes a photograph is captured which seems perfect but afterwards you discover that one person has their eyes closed; this is where retouching becomes a lot more complicated. This is when cloning and head swopping comes into play. Again, this takes time to make sure it is perfect.
WHAT IF MY BABY IS RED OR HAS JAUNDICE?
In lightroom, you would need to select areas and manipulate the colour, this could be by adding red or yellow to an area of a face or even desaturating parts for each person, this is done before retouching your images.
WHAT ABOUT THE BACKGROUND?
Sometimes the background can be your biggest problem. You need to make sure it is 100% clean and zoom in to make sure you see no dirt or dust. A professional photographer also needs to look out for any gradient banding before printing the images.
If a photograph has a white background, each images needs to be checked and made sure everything is 100% white before printing; the smallest mistake could result in an image having to be reprinted. Making a background white can take a long time especially cleaning around people’s hair line. If this is done too quickly, you will see a burnt out effect on your hair line. I often see this happening in school photographs due to the quantity of images being retouched and the production process to turn the images around quickly for parents.
WHY DOES YOUR FINAL RESULT STILL LOOK DIFFERENT TO THE PHOTOGRAPH AT THE BACK OF THE CAMERA?
Once all the retouching work is complete for your baby, sibling, mum and dad, a photo gets tweaked and a treatment is added to finalise the look of the newborn photograph. This is when your image is ready for print.
When shooting families on location, very creative final treatments can be added to enhanse your photograph.
Natasha, what do you cover?
ALL purchased images are fully retouched as above.
When I retouch your images, I always look out for:
colour
skin imperfections
teeth
dirty or bitten fingernails
lighten wrinkles and bags under eyes
double chins
head swopping - when justified
slight slimming
hair
backgounds