The camera is a realist. The human eye is an idealist.
Sometimes road signs, power lines, tourists, pimples and wrinkles show up in the final picture as optically perfect, but jarring details. Sometimes an art director’s concept requires a photomontage. Sometimes digital manipulation resolves complex production problems. Sometimes Photoshop avoids direct confrontation with residents and police.
I specialize in discreet, credible and convincing photomontage. I can reshape, distort and compose images according to an art concept in such a way that makes the manipulation invisible to the viewer. I avoid the overdone, plastic look and prefer to preserve initial detail, grain and texture.
Take a look at some of my digital retouching work.
Note: all images in my digital retouching portfolio are not my photography. They were shot by other photographers and then supplied to me for retouching.
My 25 years of experience with all areas of digital retouching, including product, skin and photomontage, affords me incredible creative freedom. I can’t remember myself without a computer and call Photoshop my home. I work with slide and negative film, prints and digital files. I am maniacal about scanners, digital cameras, and printers. I was among the first to adopt and evangelize color management with Photoshop 5 in 1999.
My photography seldom requires heavy digital retouching. I always work on location and prefer available light. Most fail to notice the amazing gamut of colors, lights and textures of reality. When people see uncommon light or color, they think Photoshop.
I think shooting time. I expect to create the right picture right now and avoid digital manipulation afterwards. I stay curious and intent. I interact with the environment: experiment with viewpoints, wait for the best light and sometimes arrange the details (always carry a small garbage bag for those cigarette butts). My focus to extract the most from the scene creates subtlety, harmony and realism.
The bulk of my post-production in Photoshop expands the mechanical recording of the camera to the sophistication of human eyesight. Photoshop was not there with me on the shoot. Photoshop has not seen what I have seen. I manually adjust every scan to match the original slide. I process every RAW file with individual parameters to correspond to my initial vision.
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