My Life Photo Blog

Last week my assistant Tracy and I were headed downtown for an engagement session with one of my amazing couples when we got on the topic of editing. Tracy is also a photographer not just a fab assistant.

How much is too much and why do we, by we I mean photographers and those being photographed, feel such a strong need for it? In the beginning of my wedding photography I was like most. I edited and edited and edited to the point that the photo stops being a photograph and is now instead something that is reminiscent of my client with plastic smooth skin, perfect hair and not a bag under her eyes to speak of.

But what was funny was that all the photography I had done prior as a fine art student on my own and the photography of professionals I admire didn’t do this. Why? Because the photograph was real! A real moment. A real person. A real emotion. I did not start on this path to spend hours as a graphic editor in front of a computer. I love photographs. I wanted to be a lifestyle photographer. I love the real memory of that frozen moment that a photograph can generate for us years down the road. I love the wild hairs and wrinkled nose of a smiling truly happy bride.

The photograph ceases to be a photograph once you remove and edit out all of the wonderful details that made it unique and beautiful. It was this uniqueness that caused me to push the shutter to start with. I saw the beauty of the moment, not the possibly of the the beauty once I spend an hour in photoshop trying to make it better because I believe that I can’t make it better. I can’t make the client “better” they are who they are and they are beautiful and I truly believe that!

It is perfect, a perfect moment all by itself. Pure. Real. I want my photographs, despite all the possibility that technology gives us, should be just that….a beautifully captured moment frozen by the click of my shutter.