Portraits – sometimes simple is best

This morning, I was trying to decide what to blog about. I was looking online at some portraits that seem to be so over re-touched that the subject’s skin looked plastic. The effect was so heavy handed that an otherwise good photo was ruined. If there are blemishes or unsightly scars I certainly agree that it’s OK to remove them. But skin has texture and pores. It just does. Leave it alone. I know there have been a gazillion blogs about this and now there is a gazillion and one. 😉

I know as professional photographer we get pressure from portrait clients to retouch images to look like Vogue covers, but try to resist the impulse and explain to them it is just a fad. It’s kinda like selective colorization. It was big in the early 2000’s, but it’s now regarded as a way to distract the eye away from the fact that it was a bad photo to begin with.

While I do a lot of composite images and other Photoshop trickery, I do really enjoy shooting simple black and while portraits. I feel there’s an honesty to them. All the distracting backgrounds are eliminated, colors become shades, and you really see the subject.

I shoots lots of different styles of portraiture, everything from fashion/editorial style to environment portraits, but I have a soft spot for a good, simple black and white portrait. It may come from spending years shooting, processing, and printing my own photos. While I was looking thru some old images this morning I came across this senior portrait from 2007.

A portrait like this never goes out of style. It has drama and a certain reality that a color photos misses. If your monitor is calibrated you will notice while the left side of her head is dark, there is enough light on the background that she doesn’t blend into it. The tonal range stretches from almost pure white (her eyes) to pure black (her hair on the left).

Plus her skin looks normal, not plastic.

Thanks for reading and you can see more of my black and white portraits (and some color ones too) by clicking here.

-Ken