Today was another one of those days: editing portraits in Lightroom and Photoshop, my weapons of choice. I edit a lot on the move or on the couch, so the cloud and editing programmes that work on my laptop and tablet or phone are preferred.
I don't really like editing at all. Do you? What annoys me is changing the situation as it was. It must be my deep-rooted love for street photography. That's more recording anyway. Of course, I am also almost fifty, so a little less deep grooves in my face I also like. "If it's not there in a fortnight, I'll try to remove it", that's my promise most of the time.
There are those who can get lost in touching up fresh things like blackheads, red marks on a neck and dry flakes. Who love playing with layers in Photoshop and the transparency of those layers. Who change the texture and give people in their late thirties a skin of their early thirties. Who can rid the street of carelessly discarded Starbucks cups, cigarette butts and leaked oil without you ever noticing. But portrait photographers with a passion for fashion and Photoshop are rarely satisfied street photographers, in my opinion. Street photography is also about letting go, and letting what is there be.
It is important to mention that the street photographer is actually never just a street photographer. Often he or she is also a consultant, or car salesman. She has a newspaper route, or he works in the Albert Heijn to go. Or, like me, also does a lot of work for companies. Creating social media content, website material. Street photography, but in a business. There's simply no dry bread to be earned in street photography, but my heart lies there!
A street photographer prefers to create in-camera all the finished product. On my Fujifilm camera, I use Acros+Yellow and set my shadows and highlights to +1. The jpg created then is actually already ready for Instagram, or can go on the wall. Since I also shoot portraits, I still had to delve into the Clearasil of photography: retouching. That we use such a difficult word for it says it all. Polishing. Making people more beautiful. Frustrating yourself because the norm is different from what you see on your screen.
Question of conscience: if the portraits are just for the website and social media, how far should you go? In that case, is it realistic to charge your client an hour of editing? Or is it better to sit back, look at the photo from a distance, and decide like a street photographer that the world is the way it is? The end justifies the editing time.
Still, something to think about next time you're worried about that one pimple that just won't go away. Maybe that pimple is allowed to be there!
This article previously appeared in Focus Magazine (the best photography magazine in the Netherlands), for which I was allowed to write a column every issue in 2023 and 2024.