Perfection! ..

"Nature is not all to be represented as it is, but as it ought to be, and might possibly have been; and it is required of and should be the aim of the artist-photographer to produce in the likeness the best possible character and finest expression of which that face or figure could ever have been capable"

How's about that? Sounds like page one of the Photoshop instruction book, doesn't it, but this quote came from a speech given to America's National Photographic Association .. in 1870 !!

Two daguerreotypists, Southworth and Hawes, set up a studio in Boston in the mid-nineteenth century with the sole intention of making people look good, but went to great lengths to hold on the 'essence' of the sitter. I think that ideal is kinda getting lost in this photoshop-mad world of ours, and it's why I still stick adamantly to my ethos of not changing anything in a digital shot. Interestingly, Wedding photographers seem to be seperating into two types - there are the 'fully-posed, fully-photoshopped, fantasy snappers who, in my view, are generally people who have been taught how to shoot Wedding photographs - and the 'purists' who insist that they only shoot documentary-style and don't interfere with any of the Wedding Day's proceedings. Me? I just like to tell it as it is, and seeing as 'as it is' involves the bride and groom always wanting some posed shots, then that is what I shoot, but without all the hoo-ha of trying to make their photographs look like some corny fashion shoot. Still, it's all subjective, and it's back to Southworth and Hawes for today's closing line. "The question.." they ask "What is truth? .. will continue to be asked as long as human nature exists" Well put! ...