To Edit or Not to Edit Portrait Photography for Children

To Edit or Not to Edit in Portrait Photography

 To edit or not to edit why photographers and individuals deceive and persuade the viewers with photo manipulation.  By  Leta Davenport

 To edit or not to edit a big question in the digital world of photography. We all love to see friends and loved ones winning competitions, glamour and glitz, however are there times that photo manipulation is too excessive?

What are we trying to perceive when we continually manipulate digital photography? This is a subject which in today’s world is a big question. We all know that time brings change in humans as well as in the world itself. However there are times when our subjects look best in their natural state be it happy or sad. Photo manipulation after all is used to deceive and persuade the viewers to look closer have a different opinion on an image that has been taken.

A perfect example of photo manipulation is in the pageant world. We take what are naturally beautiful images of children and ladies and change them into a subject which is much more mature than what the subject truly is or we remove the age lines to make an older adult model appear younger. There are times that manipulation gives the viewer a chance to see that beautiful, flawless human.

Catching the eye of the viewers a reason for photo manipulation adding enhancements such as color, desaturation, black/white photography, glitz and natural glitz pageant photography. How can photographers get to the point where their work has that added “pop”? It is all about manipulating photos we take during our day to day activities and time on the job. Experience comes from hours of working at the computer with editing programs. A technique which is for some hard to master. The average person probably doesn’t realize just what goes into editing images to give the look and feel that the subject is looking for. So many times we hear will you remove the background, add this add that wow will only take five minutes of your time. What appears simple to the average person a photographer who manipulates images with an editing program knows there is time and skill involved in order to obtain that certain look.

There is a challenge for the photographer to enhance photography and with the digital world the challenge becomes easier every day with various editing programs. With all said I would like to share some of our work which has been published in various locations, portraits of children who have been excited to win contests due to photo manipulation. It is all about fun, beauty, fashion, and the new world of photography. Photography the new world of challenge for the photographer, award winning photos for the public, emotion captured and memories to last a lifetime for all involved.