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.

Being busy

So August and September have been particularly busy months for me recently. A quick review of what I've been up to the last few weeks:

• Had three engagement shoots, with three amazing couples; 
• Photographed the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research annual Glasgow Bikeathon; (my "good cause" work)
• Photographed three beautiful weddings, in Wales, Edinburgh and Glasgow; 
• Had a stall at the Fabulous Wedding Show in Dunblane; 
• Been the official photographer for the Plans and Presents Big Fat Scottish Tweet Up for Scottish wedding suppliers;
• Attended the Chris Hanley Cherish the Dress Workshop near Manchester;

And of course all that photography means lots of photo editing afterwards!

I do enjoy being busy though. It's been an interesting year, and with autumn coming up and the wedding season slowing somewhat, its been a good time to also think about doing some more portfolio shoots. In particular, I've got an especially large portfolio shoot lined up, which should be a good opportunity to exercise my creative muscles a little more.

The other part of my work of course, is the administrative work, which will be getting a strong review in October.

I'm also looking forward to revealing some more exciting things for my 2012 wedding photography packages with the introduction of some new and exciting products, as well as a few little extras specifically for my couples!

Still to blog about over the next few weeks:

• Photographs from the wedding in Wales;
• A photoshoot with Zoe Anderson, wedding dress designer, at Linlithgow Palace;
• Photographs from a contemporary Edinburgh wedding; 
• Pictures from the Chris Hanley workshop;
• and a gorgeous, relaxed Glaswegian wedding. 

Portrait of a lady

18th Century lady, originally uploaded by Kristin Mitchell photography.

So the past few weeks, I've been kept exceptionally busy.  As you might know, I already have a collection of qualifications in photography from college, but I recently signed up to a night class for a one-off course. 

When I left college last year, there was a photograph I'd created which to be honest, was what I'd call a bit of a slow burner. It took me a while to fall in love with it, but lots of other people seemed to like it a lot.  

It's this photograph, of a kite. 

The kite photograph was originally for an advertising concept, for wind energy. The outdoor image was shot first, then projected onto muslin cloth in a studio, and a kite was placed in front of the muslin.

After leaving college, I wished I'd experimented more with projections. So, when the chance came to do another class, and a self-initiated project, I decided to use projections again.

The inspiration for my project was old paintings and portraits, how aristocrats were portrayed in front of gorgeous vistas. So I started doing some digging around and more research. I decided to create modern portraits using projections to create the idea of someone sitting in front of a gorgeous vista.

It was a surprisingly big project. Although I created three portraits, the starting point was the background. I decided to take lots of pictures of backgrounds, so that I could bring out the richness in the shadow and detail in the lighter areas, much like traditional portrait painters would have done. If you look at almost any traditional painting, even in the darkest corner, it's not actually black paint; there's tiny details, in deep, dark rich colours, so subtle but still there. I wanted to make sure this wasn't lost with a camera, and took several photos, layering them in such a way to bring out the details and make it a rich palette of colour.

Next, was the portrait. The background was projected, but there had to be separate exposures - one for the background and another for the sitter; the background needed a longer exposure time than the sitter under the studio lights.

For two of the portraits, I hired dresses from Scottish Opera.

The portrait above, drew on inspiration from the 18th Century. I also created a portrait of a one of my regular models, Vivien Taylor, using a gorgeous early 19th Century Jane Austen period costume. The inspiration behind this picture can be found on Pinterest.

Finally, I took a leap into the 20th Century. I was very much curious about this image of Elizabeth II on her coronation by Cecil Beaton. What was curious to me, initially, was the angles of the background in relation to the chair and seating position of the Queen. In closer cropped images, the background is looking up, at an angle, into the roof, while the Queen sits straight on, towards the camera. This wider angle version hints that perhaps what we see behind the Queen isn't all it seems, but maybe a backdrop.

With this in mind, the lovely Wendy from Flossy and Dossy agreed to pose for me as my regal model. Here she's wearing a dress she made, with the tiara kindly borrowed from Gioia Mia. The interior of this shot was taken inside St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, and actually I think the flags and banners add an authenticity to the final image. Oh, and if you're wondering, yes, the clothes pegs were entirely intentional in the image - I wanted to show it wasn't simply a photoshop job, as people's awareness of image creation tends to become more cynical of how an image has been created.


The whole project kept me busy for the best part of seven weeks, including writing the proposal, sourcing background locations, photographing and editing the backgrounds, undertaking the research and constructing a research workbook, finding suitable dresses and props, as well as photographing and editing the images, printing them, and finally writing a evaluation. Both the proposal and evaluation had to be the length of an essay each.

So what do I get at the end of it? Well, enough credits, in conjunction with my previous college qualifications to undertake a single year's honours degree course, if I wish to do so. The alternative would have been to have spent a year full-time doing a degree course.

At this point in time, I have no intention on going back to college. While I enjoyed my time there, I don't feel that it's the right choice for me at this time. However, I always like to leave doors wide open when it comes to opportunities for the future, especially as this was very much a one-off night class. What I really got from it was the chance to explore projected backgrounds again in a large studio, and almost exclusive use of the studio for several weeks. It was also nice to do a more academic project again, and throw myself back into writing proposals and evaluations, and knowing that my work will be heavily critiqued and thoroughly evaluated by tutors.

For now though, its life back to normal and back to 21st century portraits!

Seeing Past the Photograph

Today I thought I’d write about looking at photography.

Whenever we log on to the internet and look at people’s websites and galleries, its easy to be blown away by a slick photography website, and overlook what we’re actually considering. If you went into a car showroom, and saw a lovely, shiny new car, complete with the new car smell, lovely wet look black tyres, the reflection of lights dazzling on the bonnet, its easy to get the wow factor just looking at it. It might be a car you actually don’t like very much, that doesn’t meet your needs, you might not even like the colour – but the showroom surroundings make it look great.

Looking at an online gallery is a bit like a showroom. The hardest bit is actually looking properly at the images and deciding whether it meets our needs, whether we think it’s a good photograph. Is that a photograph you’d want in your home, or are you being dazzled by the showroom effect?

Photography is an individual taste thing. I can’t tell you what to look for. I don’t even advise looking at whether it “fulfils the rules of composition”, because some photos don’t adhere to the so-called rules and look great; and anyway, rules are made to be broken.

What you need to look for is whether you can you see yourself in that photo; do you want to be that person in the photo; is that a photograph you would want to have on your wall or in your wedding album for the rest of your life?

To help though, I’ve written a few things I tend to consider when I’m looking through other people’s work.

1. What's going on in the portfolio?
Most photographers have their work broken down into different categories, different galleries. I look at each category gallery as a portfolio. Look through each portfolio carefully, and see what they’re including in it. Also consider what they’ve not included though – have they included images of details, the flowers, table decorations, cake, rings? They may have chosen not to include it in their portfolio, but by considering what’s included – and what’s not included – can help inform you, and you can always ask about this if you choose to contact them.

2. Size and variety of portfolio?
I've learned to try and edit my portfolio down to the very best images I have, the ones I feel proudest of. I might have four or five similar photographs but editing is important, so I'll find the strongest image of those four or five and will only use that image in my portfolio. A portfolio with lots of similar images for example, a bride from a slightly different angle, but in the same location, same pose... to me, its a bit like watching the same advert three times in a commercial break. It can work as a diptych or triptych as a sequence to tell a little story (where two or three images are placed together on one page). One thing that's always been ingrained to me is that its better to have a small portfolio of 10 fantastic images, than 20 images where 10 aren't so great. I've always been reminded I'm only as strong as my weakest photograph. In terms of variety, that's a personal choice. I actually have different portfolios for each category of work I like doing. So my wedding portfolio consists purely of wedding work; there's no portraits or non-wedding related photographs in the selection. I like seeing portfolios that stick to one category of photography. I'm less keen on portfolios with two garden flower photos; three bridal images; a slick city building; two of cars; four of children in a studio... I like photographs to stay relevant to the subject of the portfolio. It doesn't matter if the portfolio is small, as long as it’s the best work the photographer has to offer. I think of it like a chef showcasing their food - they don’t serve a starter, main course and dessert all on the same plate at the same time.

3. What do these people look like?
Nobody is perfect, everyone has their flaws. A good photographer though should make the viewer completely overlook the flaws. It shouldn't be the first, second or third thing you see. The mood of the photograph should be the thing that catches your eye first – are these people wearing fixed grins, or are they genuinely having fun? We've all seen photos of ourselves that we hate, ones that show off a double chin, look right up the nostrils, make our bodies look larger than we need reminded of. A good photographer should be able to avoid this. Sometimes photographers will ask someone to drape their body over something – a car, a tree, a bench. Think about how these people look – whether their pose looks stiff and uncomfortable, or whether it looks relaxed and natural.

4. What am I looking at here?
This is a bit like no. 3 – look at what the photographer has seen; or maybe look at what the photographer hasn’t seen. Taking a good photograph involves more than pressing a button – the photographer should be looking around before they take the photograph. It’s about the attention to detail in the image. So look around the picture. When we pose for photos with our friends, we might find the tidiest location to take the photo, or we select a nice view in the background. Has the photographer thought about this?

Some details can be edited out, but it should be noted that Photoshop and other photo editing software isn’t a failsafe, fix-all. There are things I will edit out of the image, which are easy to take out, and might be unavoidable, for example a bright green exit sign in the far background of a photograph; dead leaves lying on a lawn, even fence poles between my subject and a great view.

Ideally a photographer should get everything right in camera, rather than rely on Photoshop to fix it. Some things simply can’t be fixed in Photoshop, and a good photographer should manoeuvre to try and get it as right as possible.  Look around the image and see if the photographer has achieved that.

5. What effects have they used?
There are so many effects now, but you still need to look beyond the effect to see the actual image. The effects a photographer might employ include: sepia or cyanotype toning; spot-saturation (one item is colour, the rest is black and white), soft, hazy effects, turning the camera at a 45 degree angle.

Personally, of all those listed above I dislike the black and white with spot saturation effect most of all, as I find it distracting and overused. I also think its an effect that is already starting to go out of fashion, and it’s going to date the image quickly, although its something I think most people will experiment with at some point.

Sepia and cyanotype (blue toning) can be quite nice, as an alternative to black and white, but it depends on the situation. Certainly, their roots are in traditional darkroom techniques.  The 45 degree angle will give an effect of being candid, suggesting that it’s been “shot from the hip” and unposed – but you’ll have to look carefully to decide whether its actually posed or not. 

The most important thing to decide is whether these effects are appropriate for the actual content of the image. A vintage wedding car might look good with a sepia tone; a modern wedding car however might not.  Equally a black and white image of a bride with spot saturated blue eyes or red lips may end up looking a bit too supernatural or ghoulish.

I remember years ago at a portfolio review in London, a photographer asked me why I’d put an image into black and white when the rest of the set were in colour. I replied, “I thought it looked good when I tried it out”. The photographer advised me that I ought to think about what I was going to do with the image before I took the photograph rather than as an afterthought. Ever since then, effects have been a pre-thought rather than slapping it on an image afterwards to see what happens.  I’ll take the image with an idea in mind about how I want to present it. If an effect looks a bit odd, then I tend to assume the photographer hasn’t planned or considered the image first. I love photograph where the effect complements the subject matter perfectly.

These aren’t hard and fast rules for analysing photography, but its important to remember this is something you need to love once it’s come out of the showroom. There’s nothing worse than a photograph depreciating in its value to you when you take it home.  

A story behind every photo...

This is a photograph from a recent photo shoot I did for a make up artist. I liked this photograph most of all so thought I'd post it to my blog. 

The story behind this shoot, was that the make up artist (Joanna) runs an online retro-vintage clothes store. All of the pieces she sells are unique one-off items, and she had a few which needed photographing for her site. This particular item was a pussy-cat bow blouse. 

We decided to theme the shoot. I like to make little stories about photo shoots, I've always been interested in stories since I was a kid. Before I got into photography, I used to spend a lot of my spare time writing, so I'm driven by plots, narrative, and characters and that's something I try to bring into my photographs. 


The theme of this shoot was to create four different personas for each of the outfits. We decided that we'd go with different card suits for this. The pussycat bow was teamed with a pair of killer heels and a black leather pencil skirt. This was the Queen of Spades look. Our Diamond queen wore leopard print leggings, a shiny quilted clutch bag, and a black bodysuit. Our Jack (or Jill) of Clubs went for a clubber look (of course!), with a MC Hammer pink t-shirt, black leggings, and a wild sequins boyfriend blazer. Finally, the Queen of Hearts was dolled up to look like a 50's pin-up girl.

The thing I enjoy about these sorts of shoots, is that I have this chance to get quite experimental. It's hard work - but half the hard work really comes through the non-camera based work. 


Before I started really getting into photography, studying it, when I was taking photos for pleasure and starting out, I didn't really consider the volume of work involved behind the picture. However, when I started to take photography more seriously, I noticed how things changed. If I'm honest, I probably took less photos the more seriously I took photography. 


A shoot like this involves a lot of ground work before the button is pressed. Researching the idea, buying a background (B&Q, if you're interested), looking at what had been done before, and deciding to model the cards on 1970s style novelty playing cards, agreeing on how the photographs ought to look, what we'd do, what we wanted and didn't want. I even made a mock-up to see what I'd need to consider before I took a photograph. And that's not even the whole story as it only covers my involvement. 


After the shoot, I got to work on editing the photos. 


Although I don't take a machine-gun approach to my photography, I do make sure I take as many as I can. My approach is about getting the set up right first - so there are always test shots for exposure, particularly when the model changes clothes as different fabrics might need different lighting adjustments to make the photo work. Then we get into the actual shoot itself. 


We worked on different poses - what suited the model (Romy) best, what angles showed the clothes off to their best advantage, and what portrayed the character we were trying to create. Romy was great in this shoot - she really embraced the different characters and what we were trying to do, offering poses and suggestions and being pro-active in front of the camera, which was really important for me. 


I'll be honest, I'm a bit of a liar when it comes to a shoot. I usually say "just one or two more", and will fire off more than just the one or two I request. I can't help it: if something's working well, I take full advantage while I can.


Editing always takes time. I'll compare images carefully, and narrow down my selection. I divide my photographs into groups. I've got a pretty good idea of exactly what I'm looking for in a photograph, but I like to give my clients options, selecting the top cuts from each group. I also try to be aware if the client made any special requests as to shots they specifically wanted. In this case, Joanna wanted  a close up photograph of Romy's face to showcase her make up artistry - the photograph shown at the start of this entry. 

I suppose editing might seem like the easy bit, or that things can be automatically fixed by Photoshop. Photoshop has many wonderful features, but it can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. 

The idea through research and planning, is to help make sure that as much goes right before taking the photograph. There's no substitute for getting the photograph right in camera. Editing afterwards should be about enhancing what is there and removing what couldn't be avoided, for example pylons surrounding a location where there's otherwise a beautiful vista.

Sitting in front of a computer for hours, painstakingly editing photographs is hard work. Its a bit like sitting writing a business report, or analysing statistics in a spreadsheet for hours on end. You end up poring over details, cross-checking to see whether you've kept things consistent. I'm doing the same thing as I would in a darkroom. Admittedly, I'm not getting a sore back from standing over an enlarger in a darkroom, my eyesight trying to focus on something that's dimly lit and negative, my clothes stinking of chemicals from fixer and developer agents. However, much like staring at numbers on a spreadsheet, after a while, I do get cramps in my hand and need to get out my chair and stretch (it's usually around then that someone might call and ask "have you finished yet?"). I have to admit however that I enjoy editing photographs - if the hard work involved was demotivating and soul-destroying, I don't think I could continue in this line of work.


When I'm booked by a client, it's not just my ability to hold a camera that they're paying for. There's a lot of work that goes into each of those photographs before I've pressed a button, and after I've put my camera away. You've probably heard of the Pareto principle, and I suppose in this case the physical act of photographing only accounts for 20% of the work involved - the remaining 80% is image research and editing. 

Every photograph has a story to tell, including its own story of how that photograph was created from start to finish.