; 
Earlier today, I posted the above photo to Facebook and I wrote:
Hey guys, we did a quick sitting with Bill Whitmire yesterday. We needed to rush a photo to someone for a presentation we’re doing in Oct. We wanted to clog your feed with us two cheeseballs. Nothing says sincere salesy like the double head tilt.
I posted it partly because I wanted to see what kind of reaction it would get from our friends and family. It appeared to be quite a hit. Which made me feel good about submitting it to represent us for a talk we’re giving in baltimore next month. We’ve talked on the blog about the benefits of Photoshop, and since this is our photo, I feel comfortable showing you how Photoshop is almost essential to even regular, everyday men and women. I’m posting the rest of this below the fold, because I want you to open up the photo (click on it) and see if you can spot all that’s “fake” about the image. Then go through my notes and see if you were right. Go ahead. Giver ‘er a whirl.
Let’s talk about Photoshop! The point of Photoshopping someone is that when you’re talking to someone, you’re not staring at them like you might a photograph. But when you are staring at a photo, and you have hit the subjects with a big strobe, you get to see not only great lighting, but you also get to see imperfections. I’ll make you a bet, let’s all go to a bar and we’ll invite the hottest male or female model you’ve ever seen in a magazine or movie. We’ll shoot them, without makeup, and I’ll show you a zillion things that will render them much more average than you imagined. Beautiful people are not exempt from what lights (be in the sun or artificial) can do to them. So let’s talk about our image. Here is my starting point: 
; ; It’s not bad, right? Notice it’s actually two photos merged. One problem with shooting two people at the same time is one person is making a stink face while the other one is making a “I wanna fuck you face.” It’s not always pretty. So I took another photo of Tina that is slightly different and dropped her face on top. We agreed on two photos and these were them. You can see that our background doesn’t cover us both, so I had to fix that. I had to completely rebuild the background using another background I built from another shoot. This is a common issue in photography so don’t get all uppity. I can’t tell you how many backgrounds I rebuild. Let’s look at what I fixed on me. 
My starting point, I have some bags under my eyes, my skin needs a little smoothing, but not too much. I’m a man, and men don’t need too much smoothing. But we don’t wear foundation either, and skin tends to be a bit blotchy. If you open the image (click!), you can see some minor blemishes on my forehead. I also have this wonky nodule over my right eye (your left). I hate it, but whatever. One little white dot in the corner of my eye isn’t going make or break a friendship (that I know of). I also sharpened my eyes, whitened my whites a bit, and sharpened my lips. You can also see that I gave myself a haircut (see my right ear, your left). I also de-saturated the color so it wouldn’t be so damn color-y. For me, I took wrinkles out of my wrinkled shirt. I had to duplicate the pocket on my left (your right) and cover up the more wrinkled one on my right. For Tina, I smoothed her hair and skin. These are things that photographers can do for you. And perhaps you think that’s lying. Or you think it’s wrong. Lot’s of photography is throwaway. Especially these days. So if you only have a second to make an impression, make sure that impression isn’t something that is going to break someone’s concentration. People — unfortunately — judge books by covers. God doesn’t. Thank goodness! But people do. So if you’re wondering what a pro can do … well, this is part of it. You should see all the other parts. ; ; ;
