I used Photoshop to Manipulate These Self Portraits
Photo Retouching, Post Production, Image Manipulation.
All these areas have captivated me since I was about 16. I remember researching and practicing on photoshop during my art classes in high school. When I went to university I was even more excited to be learning Digital Imaging from an Adobe Ambassador. It was here I really pushed myself into achieving more, and better results.
This area requires discipline. It requires dedication and practice. I was retouching and restoring old photos for a company, and I had a lot of customers ask me: “how do you do it”. I could only answer: “A lot of practice”. A lot of older customer assumed it was just because I was from a younger generation. I suppose so, yes, I have grown up around computers and this helps. But skills in retouching and photoshop don’t just come to those born from the 90s onwards.
A project, an Idea:
I had an idea for a conceptual photographic series. It was an idea that relied heavily on post production, and it was something I had never explored before. This was half the fun for me. I wanted to see if I could actually do it, and I spent hours and hours on the series of images. Not just editing, but there was a bit involved in the shooting process too. I will add, that these are all self portraits, and without the aid of an assistant. The many ‘before’ shots were relatively amusing.
Censorship:
The idea is censorship, and the various ways we censor ourselves, or others censor us. I particularly address body image here, with the ‘free the nipple’ campaign being a social influence of the time when I shot these images (2015 – it seemed a bigger movement back then). Why is one part of the female body more offensive than another, and why so it it offensive on a female and not a male?
I explore in my images the idea of natural vs fake. The images are overly retouched and perfected – looking at the smoothness of the tones in the skin, the smoothness of the hair. I placed the subject on top of a natural environment to juxtapose these ideas. The result leaves the studio-lit, perfected subject on top of a natural beauty. How is our natural beauty censored so much? After all, we come from nature too.