in retrospect…

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY, everyone!!

don’t do what i wouldn’t do…

Brian White of Background Exposure.com commented on my last post and sent me this link of retouching images… it shows how, with the proper tools, one can make a veritable goose into a very beautiful swan…

i have been an avid reader of FHM Philippines and Maxim Philippines… both have high enough appeal to me, or to any hot-blooded male [and female], that i have been buying it eversince its maiden issue…

but i have now been disillusioned into buying these magazines for the simple fact that i feel like a fool drooling over those semi-naked women when, now, i know for a fact that what is being shown is not really them, but a perception of what they [magazine editors] really want us to see, an image… a fake… aritificial… invented… an illusion… A FORGERY!!

and we have been eating it all up!! yes, you, you, you, and, sadly, me…

i have nothing against the use of tools to retouch images… but only when you see a smudge or dirt which is the photographer’s fault… i’d rather show all the imperfections of my subjects than do an Angelica on them… and by that, i mean the wholesale changes they made simply to make their photos more beautiful… more appealing…

i am a photographer myself, though still an amateur, but all of my pictures are real… nothing was done to them at all… yes, maybe a little retouch on the color scheme [to sepia or black and white], but that was all… oh yes, people have asked me to wipe off the pimples on their faces, or make them a little thinner [or fatter]… but those are what, to me, make them intereseting subjects!! because they’re real… no imagery… real…

and that is what i’ll strive to be… to capture images that show the real person behind the scenes i take… i won’t feel a real photographer when all i do is take the pictures and retouch them to come out with a totally different picture… they do not become my own anymore…

i will now be looking at pictures of models on billboards, posters, and most of all, magazines, in a new light…

Ciao, sweetie…

what started out to be a joke is now fast becoming a sick joke…

i am an amateur photographer, and whenever i have a shot that i’d want to keep but is really not worth posting for some reason or another, all i’d do is just fire up my ‘ol trusty photo editor, and do a little touch up on my photos… but my edits are limited to changing color settings, putting in a little artistic filter [sharpening, redering, pixelating], or simply to wipe away a little smudge on an otherwise perfect skin…

but i’ve never resorted to wholesale body changes on a subject, i mean, those total touch-ups that will render the subject unrecognizable [if you know the subject well], or that will put my amateurish photographic integrity in question…

this is what happened with the latest photo shoot of Angelica Panganiban with the Ginebra San Miguel poster… when the pictures first came out, everyone [including me] were all wowed with the way she looked on them, those fine wavy lines of her body, those perky full breasts, her poses were made to really make you stand up [both figuratively and literally] and take notice…

but then, pictures of the preparation for the shoot leaked out, and what were in there were very different with the final outcome… at first, i didn’t want to believe in them because i believed Angelica was that beautiful… but then again, better see for yourself:

guess which one’s the touched up…

that is what i meant by wholesale body changes… those baby fats were cleanly taken away and substituted with those fluid body curves… those somewhat immature breasts were perked up and made full and rounded!! i really have nothing against this, but it was as if people who did this made Angelica a goddess, instead of just a beautiful yet still emerging young lady [i love those baby fats of hers...]…

she 1st came out as the cover girl of Maxim’s Philippines maiden issue… we were all literally drooling over her… but now we know that this is all thanks to the magic of retouching… this action now puts into question the veracity of all those pictures of semi-naked women floating around in 30 or 40 different girlie mags… am i looking at an original picture? or am i viewing a retouched image? have they done an “Angelica” on all of those pictures that got me [and my wife] all excited? hmmm… [i wonder what those touch up artists are making nowadays??]

so, for all those whose pictures i’ve taken but weren’t really good, don’t worry…

“i’ll do an Angelica on you!!”

talk about truth in advertising…

Ciao, sweetie…