Photo Mastering Explained

The Art of Retouching

Photography is 100% subjective. It’s the art of “capturing” a subject and telling its story in a single image.

So when it comes to “Mastering Photos” or professionally retouching them, you can find thousands of blogs and video tutorials all over the Internet that will give you how-to tips and tricks about best practices.

But what you don’t see explained very often is WHY we master the images…

How many different stories do you want to tell?

The primary reason photographers master, retouch, “Photoshop” the images we capture is because our customers and models expect it. That’s obvious. You have to “clean up” the flaws, imperfections, scars, freckles, moles, fly-aways, lint, wrinkles, crows-feet, teeth whitening and every other little detail.

But I believe retouching a photo is about revealing what you actually captured not just reshaping it. If you reshape too much, the result is fake - and it doesn’t tell the truth.

So whether its a headshot, product or lifestyle editorial, every image must speak in a way that impresses confidence in the viewer, casting director, buyer, prospective boss or future spouse…

To illustrate my point, I’d like to show you this series of photos I took of Sincere. She wanted a series of different “looks” for her headshot portfolio. So all these photos were taken within a single day.

Here are the 100% RAW selects…