Photo retouching. . . . !

Hello fellow friends and bloggers! As the photographer for jlamore.com people ask me all the time about photography and what we do at jlamore.com to make all the models look amazing. I have to tell you in all honesty that we don't do anything in the way of photo re-touching like what you see in this video and the reason is because we shoot so many images that it would take FOREVER to get anything done. We are more or less a catalogue and not a portrait studio and we churn out images daily by the hundreds for upload. Mandy, our Creative Director, will add text and graphics for aesthetic value on the home page, lookbook and other marketing material and she is amazing but outside of that, it's pretty raw stuff going on here.

Do I take a perfect picture every time? Hell no! Will I fix a flaw in a model or fix a mistake of mine? Hell yes! Will I darken or lighten an image for better representation? Absolutely! C'mon people, I'm human and so are the models. You would not believe what goes on behind the scenes. Bad days, boyfriend problems, head colds, pimples, OMG! Even the most beautiful woman will have an off day. You work around it because there's a lot at stake.

This job is a ton of work and it's a collaboration between everyone and their flaws that make it work and I will use technology to help make my job easier. (I also have to say that Jennifer LaMore has the last word here. Does she look at every image? No way! We have shot more than 200,000 images in two years and she would not have the time for all of that but if she doesn't like the final image at the end it won't make it anywhere connected to J. LaMore or jlamore.com. Period! End of Story! You will not win this argument because Jennifer has an excellent eye for fashion.

The models are naturally beautiful which makes my job easier. All I have to do is, basically connect the dots. I need to get the models to do what they do best. they need to feel comfortable with me and I work hard at that. There is a great deal of technical knowledge with big professional cameras but once you learn the camera your eye for subject matter is more important, in my opinion. Light and shadows are the basics of all great shots. Learning this is a big deal. Putting together light and shadows with fashion. . ? It's very important for us.

This video is not what we do but it's interesting to see what you can do and what portrait studios will do for advertising clients. Cool stuff and I wish I had the time. . . .!

Jim