Great Expectations

I thought today I'd write about managing photographic expectations.

In this digital age, there is a lot that is possible with the use of photo editing software. So much so, that the product Photoshop has entered the cultural lexicon and become a noun, a verb, an adjective... it's used to explain or rationalise images, or on occasion it's a put-down and dismissal of the appearance of images (or the subject).

As a result, people do have expectations of what a photographer can do with this magic wand. (Dare I mention that it actually has a magic wand tool?).

But, there are limitations. Nothing is perfect. I've achieved some amazing results through Photoshop, including removing fences and fence posts, telegraph poles, as well as the usual enhancement of an image to make it pop. However, there are things I simply can't do, and I usually try and explain this to people.

A while ago, I took some photos for a make up artist's portfolio. She'd asked her male model to shave, but he turned up with a couple of days of facial hair growth. At the end of the shoot, as I was packing up, she asked me if I could "photoshop" out the facial hair. To be honest, it would have been quicker (and easier) if he'd shaved there and then, and we'd re-shot the entire thing. Editing an image would mean retouching every individual hair, and even then it would have resulted in looking plastic and unreal. As photographers, we need a starting point. To remove a fencepost can be easy, provided there's "information" around it to give an indication of what it looks like behind. To remove a picture on a blank wall can also be fairly straightforward. However the human face is a complex thing, with contours, shade, skin tone change even in a small space of skin, it can change completely. Think about the difference, for example, between the crease of your nose next to your nostril, up to your cheek, and under your eye. The texture, colour, pore-size, angle all changes completely within that small area.

I have edited model's faces, for photo shoots. However, the occasional blemish is easy, versus removing half a face of hair.

I was also asked about removing a radiator from some photographs. The position of the radiator was at the time, impossible to escape from. It was the only location suitable for the photographs, and suggested by the client. Where possible, I tried to crop it out, but we were shooting in a small space, and occasionally the client had several people in the shot, meaning that even with a very wide angled lens, I was limited to how much of the image I could cut out without cutting out people in the process. Five people take up more width than two, and I had to shoot accordingly. Nor was there anything around that I could use to "fill" the information behind the radiator. It covered the skirting board, and there was no alternative stretch of wall I could clone into place, without it looking like the walls were melting as if it was in a David Lynch film.


A lot of it comes down to what information is around and nearby. If there's nothing to indicate what ought to be in its place, then it's almost impossible to remove an item from an image. If the surrounding information is a tiny piece, then it does depend on the size and scale of what you want to remove. If the thing you wish removed is tiny, and there's lots of information (say, a picture frame on a large blank wall), then it becomes fairly straight forward.

Imagine it a bit like reading a sentence. If the sentence was something like:


The man went for a walk to the shops to buy food

and all you had was the first and last word, then you're really going to struggle to "guess" the rest of the sentence. If there are three words missing (for example "The", "went" "walk") you're going to have an easier time to guess and fill those words in. Photo editing software, even at its most sophisticated, is guessing the rest of the information.

It sounds easy, but you'd be surprised how time consuming this sort of thing can be. A single photograph that needs a complicated edit (which people assume is easy) could take around 30 minutes to edit. If I have to do that to 10 photos... that's pretty much most of a day sat at a computer editing ten images, which if it were for a wedding, then I'm looking at a minimum of 200 more photos to edit.

A lot of the time, as every good photographer will tell you, it's simply about getting it right in camera. That's not necessarily just about the settings on the camera, but often about picking the background. I usually scout around looking for a suitable background, even swivelling round 180 degrees can give a completely different vantage point. I also think about the lighting - for example, where the sun is in relation to my subject, or if there's any harsh lighting to avoid. That stuff is pretty straight forward. Getting it right then, is ideal - it takes seconds at the time when it could take hours later on.

Sometimes, there are things which are unavoidable. Sometimes you have to settle for a scene that's 90% perfect, because that's the best situation available. For example, I edited some photographs with some lines on the ground. The lines were pretty unavoidable and bright, and it was the best spot for the photographs to be taken at the time. So I edited them out carefully. Unless you had an identical photo of the "before" scene, you wouldn't realise it had been there, but taking them out made a massive positive improvement to the image. I've also edited out those green exit signs in the background of photos. The telegraph poles in one photo sat right in the middle of a beautiful view of the hills, so I edited it out. All of these things took a while, but afterwards you wouldn't have realised those things were there. You may well have forgotten that they were there.

So what can I do with Photoshop? Well, as mentioned previously, unsightly fence posts (as opposed to thick heavy fences), or telegraph poles are straightforward. I've removed the odd stray beer bottle that guests have taken with them into large group photographs and left standing by their feet (and when you've got 100 people in a photo, it's sometimes hard to realise at the time what every single one of them is up to at the time!). I do general enhancement, to make colours pop a little more, or remove the occasional stray hair that wisps across a bride's face in a small breeze, I remove blemishes that might have occurred overnight - we all get them from time to time, and to be honest, it's usually something you want to forget was there, and until you see a photograph with that blemish in it, you'll probably forget it was there in the first place. I've smoothed crumpled dresses, or creases that occur naturally after a bride has been sitting in a wedding car. I try to keep my photography as true to the reality of the situation as possible though, I'm very uncomfortable with digital "plastic surgery" as I call it (slimming down, pushing up etc), nor will I remove scarring, birth marks, or other permanent features. That's not to say I can't do those things, but I feel that its important to be true about who is in the photograph, rather than an unrealistic "photoshopped" version of the person.

The real trick is to managing expectations of what photo editing software and the age of digital photography can achieve. It's also about making sure you discuss in advance with your photographer what they can or cannot do. If you've got something you're not sure about, and you'd like it to be altered, have a chat with them. It's much better to discuss these things in advance than assume after the occasion that a rogue radiator can be removed where it can't, or making a man clean shaven, when often there's nothing better than doing it before the shutter clicks.