Elizia Volkmann’s Photography Blog

Stuart Spalding said to me “of course it’s all about the retouching now”.

“Well it bloody shouldn’t be,” quoth I.

I can’t quite remember what he said to me, it wasn’t as cruel as, “dear god woman you’re a dinosaur”,  he probably said something like, “Oh you’re old school” or “not many like you anymore”,  you get the jist. However, given that I am no great age at all (and indeed younger than him), is rather worrying in terms of not just photographic practice but in terms of photographic education.  I did indeed learn the old way.  On a Pentax K1000, processing my own film, printing my own contact sheets and prints and so and so forth.  I then discovered film and worked in TV/Film and made video art and short films for some years.

In film only shit directors says “we’ll fix it in post”.  As soon as a director says this, he’s lost the respect of his crew, he’s basically lost the whole film.  I’ve worked boh as a director and also in post as an editor and SFX supervisor.  So if there is one thing I’ve had istilled into me is the idea of you getting it right in camera. Film making is far too costly and difficult a came to fuck up on set, you’re shooting multiple frames for any given shot, you get it right or you get it wrong, despite what people may think, there is no fixing it in post.

So why is it that in photography you constantly hear “Never mind we’ll fix it in Photoshop?” on sets around the world?I would like to start a campaign amongst assistants, make-up artists and other on set crew and clients to repeat this when they hear that phrase:

“Ah you mean you fucked up!”

Please, have the courage of your convictions and say it loudly.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite, Photoshop is an incredible too and more to the point it is an incredibly creative tool allowing one to work more as an arist or art director than purely as a photographer and if you look at the Loro Piana shoot, Photoshop was at the heart of that shoot, and yes there’s a bit of a joke about shopping in Godzilla..she’s a dinosaur. You can have a look at the work on the following pages on my site

http://www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk/page5.htm
http://www.eliziavolkmann.co.uk/page6.htm

There are things that you cannot avoid fixing in Photoshop, stray hairs, creases in paper, footprints on the colorama, of course. There are interesting tweaks and effects that can enhance your work and create or strengthen a particular look you’ve been working on.  A good retoucher is an artist, and just as I previously worked with post-graphics and paint experts, a great creative relationship can develop.

So when a pretty established photographer turned to my beloved favourite make-up artist and said “don’t bother spending time blending in your make-up, I’ll fix it in Photoshop”, she nearly dropped her blusher brush, this was also followed by a curse upon male photographers.

No mate you cannot fix that in Photoshop, the make-up is either right or it’s WRONG!

Sam and I spend a long time getting it right, if the day goes on, well tough, it goes on, though on the whole we work pretty fast and WRAP on time, but if the make-up and hair need longer to be perfect, then they just need that extra time, I’ll shoot fast and think harder to make up that time, but that hair and make-up is as much my responsibility as it is Sam’s. Sam like me trained in film and we share the same ultra anally retentive ethic about “getting it right”.

For a long time I shunned the very anally retentive side of me, it’s not always a pleasant characteristic, I fooled myself with my relaxed air and easy going nature that I wasn’t an uptight anal retentive perfectionist (though of course I always was really).  Then one day I embraced it whole heartedly and blimey, how much did my photography improve?  …exactly.

I love photography because it is an art where the learning and experimenting never ends, you will never get to know everything, you will never get to that point where you can say “I’ve done it all, now I’ll rest”, an art is not about that it is always about bettering yourself and that is what I hope I do with every shoot that I do and with Sam I have a fellow creative who feels the same.

The other week I was sitting in on a retouch and my retoucher friend showed me some work he had been doing for another photographer (I cannot reveal names on this one kids, sorry, I protect my sources).  Well it looked slightly interesting and I looked again at the lighting, something wasn’t quite right.

“Oh I built all of that up in photoshop,” he says.

“OK show me the origial RAW scan,” says I. “Oh my god that is fucking shit, one lamp? One bloody fuck off lamp, that’s burning the model’s face out? What the fucking Fuck?”

“Yeah it’s shot with one HMI,” quoth he

“Oh dear, I know how that conversation went with the client,” sneered I.

Basically as a photographer our job is to paint/draw an image with light, so of course collaborating with a retoucher to create some dramatic effect is part of the creative art, but as a studio photographer, the real art is in the lighting and shaping your subject with your lights.  If you can’t do that and all you want is the glory and to hide behind fancy light names and your retoucher then you should ask yourself:

“Am I a photographer?”