Photography au naturel!

   I often get asked why I don't bother Photoshoping my pictures before I post them. I do love my Photoshop, and I use it sometimes when my pictures just need a little  ... how do you say ... pizzazz, but for the most part I do not retouch my pictures. So why not? I guess the best answer is that I am a bit of old school photographer. I like to manipulate lighting and angles and exposure over snapping a picture and retouching it on the computer. And to add to my "quirkiness", I never, ever retouch human subjects. That seems almost odd given today society's preoccupation with beautifying people seen everywhere from magazine covers and movies to personal snapshots of friends and family on Facebook. Why would I be so "strange" as not to want my subjects be seen as more "beautiful" and "perfect"? I guess my best answer for that is that "beauty" is in the eye of beholder.

   Beauty can mean different things to different people. I don't buy into the idea that beautiful is one size fits all kind of thing. I disagree with our society's notion that looking like plasticized Barbie or Ken doll is the only way to look beautiful. I don't agree that you have to have smooth, wrinkle and blemish free skin, free flowing long hair, size 0 waist, wear skimpy clothing, or have ultra bleached smile to be a perfect woman. I also don't see how having over-bulging muscles, full head of hair, flat, muscular stomach, and be well dressed makes anyone an ideal image of a man. I am getting tired of seeing the so called "perfect men and women" in every photograph, on every shelf, on every website. It has come to be that even little creatures that are perfect in themselves (babies and young kids) are being retouched to make their teeth a bit whiter, to make their eyes a bit more blue, or to make their hair a bit more shiny.
   I may be the only person in the world (or at least one of few) who see perfection in the way people are. I love when my subjects are captured in their "everydayness", their "ordinary self" perfection. When I see a picture of someone in a photograph I would like it to be a representation of who they are in real life, and not who they might have been if they spent thousands of dollars in plastic surgeries. I want realism in pictures. I would never want to see someone in a photograph and then meet them in real life and think how much older and chubbier and more un-kept they look in real life. I want a photograph to tell a story of who they are, where they have been, what their history is. I want a photograph to show everyone's uniqueness.
   Some people see "imperfections" as just that, things that are imperfect with the person they are photographing. I see those same "imperfections" as something special that make that person unique. A scar on someone face might be a something that is seen as ugly, or shameful, but to me it tells a story about that person. All those "imperfections" are what makes people who they are, so why try to remove them and hide them in photographs? I would assume it's because people pay big money to photographers to hide who they really are. Why show your braces, or glasses, or bigger frame when you can show a different image to the world. Isn't that the main problem that people have with meeting potential mates online? Dating sites are full of "perfect" images of "un-perfect" people. The problem is that we don't live in a virtual world where we can just use our Photoshopped images as way of representing ourselves. And then again, why would we want to? Are people really that shallow to think that by making themselves "more perfect" in their pictures they are really improving who they are. Or is it fear of letting other people see who they really are because they are unhappy with themselves?
   When I was in university, I took many classes in aboriginal studies. In one of these classes we had a guest speaker from one of the Canada's First Nations. He talked to the class about many different subjects, one of them being the idea among some Aboriginal peoples that photography steals their soul. He said that many religious and private ceremonies, or masks and costumes are forbidden from being photographed because that would interfere with that person's connection to the real world. I found this topic very fascinating, but since at the time (12 years ago) photographs on magazine covers were still benign in "retouching" human subjects I didn't think that it was so bad to be photographed. Fast forward few years and things have gotten out of control. Most people on the front covers of magazines and in moves are so retouched that they don't even resemble their own self, and if they do it's their self from many years ago. I can now see the danger of photography in hands of wrong people. There is a whole generation of boys and girls who are exposed to this kind of media and they start believing that this is the way they should look. That is stealing souls from the very young and innocent. We no longer show our kids that a woman who has laugh lines is beautiful because she has laughed a lot, or that this curvy young woman is perfect because she will be able to carry a child, or that this middle-aged man's gray hair means that he is is lived long enough to have some wisdom, or that the woman's sagging breast mean that she fed her babies. The pictures our kids see show people without their history, without scars, or sagging breast, or gray hair. Isn't that like stealing someone's soul? I would rather my pictures show imperfect subjects with all that makes them perfect in my eyes!