real as life...head shots and retouching

Once again, I find myself in true awe of the lengths to which we all will go in order to appear beautiful. That said, I know I'm a pretty girl, basically. I have been blessed with many attributes of which I am proud and more importantly, many people in my life and family that have told me on a daily basis how beautiful I am. These same people would have thought me lovely and told me so even if I had looked like a female version of Quasimodo with eczema, but that is precisely WHY they are wonderful people. They loved me for my inner beauty first.

Now, all the heartwarming PC bull crap out of the way, I can get down to the shallow skin-deep issues that really matter.

As an artist/singer/actor type, you need a little something called a head shot. A photo of only your face/head (and perhaps shoulders) that accurately represents your current (operative word here) visage. It is traditionally in black and white, which I believe has more to do with old printing constraints than the whole "I am a blank canvas, paint me as you want me" BS they tell you in college audition classes, but whatever. Everyone looks better in black and white, and I am fine with that.

Now, anyone with half a brain can see while flipping through a playbill that many artists choose to keep their glamourfied-retouched-soft-focus-shots of 15 years ago as their professional image. I can't blame them for wishful thinking, but personally I find this repugnant. Your face and body is a big part of your product as a performer and the consumer (i.e. casting agents and directors) has a right to an accurate representation of what you ACTUALLY look like.

For example, THIS was my headshot from 2002-ish, taken by a friend (thanks ROB!) at a living room shoot.



This was taken with some homemade lighting and backdrops and a 35mm camera. I scanned the original 4x6 and used it to order 8x10s from Walgreens. It worked.

Now fast forward to 2007 and I felt it no longer looked the way I look, so I took my little point and shoot hand me down digital out on my porch and took a few hold-out-the-arm-and-click shots and THIS is what I came up with:



Despite the fact that my glasses are a teensy bit crooked (which drives me INSANE and I really don't want to talk about it), I felt that this was good enough to use after a little creative photoshopping on my part.

Now, before I show you what all I did, lets take a look at what photoshopping can REALLY do. Go to this retoucher's website and check out the before and afters. I will wait...

GlennFeronRetouching


OK. if you are like me, and fascinated by this stuff, then you may have noticed little infuriating things like the erasure of ab muscles (yes, MUSCLES) on women, to give them a flatter stomach, or the smoothing of veins in feet to give a more plastic look, or the highly common plumping and rounding of breasts in EVERY shot, including changing the neckline of a blouse to accommodate said faux boob job. This guy makes me out to be the amateur that I truly am, but hey, I just wanted to soften things a bit, not suggest that I am, in fact, Theater Barbie.

So, the first thing I did, was play with making a crazy colorwarp pic for my myspace page. This is completely irrelevant to this blog, but cool, so here it is:



Now, if I had liked the way this was going, I would have fixed the whites of my eyes so they didn't look purple and a few other things, but it started to bore me, so I moved on.

I went ahead and changed it to a black and white photo. Piece o' cake.



I also added the name, number and email down there. An essential part of any audition-related head shot. Now, in this smaller version on the web, you can't actually see the issues I had with this photo as well as you can when the entire GIMONGOUS file with a really high resolution is printed out in 8x10 format. Similar to one of those evil lighted magnifying mirrors old women use to spackle their faces, it reveals things that aren't even visible in real life. Typically, I destroy this sort of evidence that proves I am indeed human and flawed, but in the interest of protesting the unrealistic expectations our image industry has forced on us all, I will now swallow my pride and show you in ACTUAL VIEW what one small part of this photo looks like in 8x10 size.

Drumroll, please............



Ok, so maybe you STILL can't see the crap that irritates me, but I see every pore the size of a Crater Lake, and tiny blonde usually invisible hairs looking like a hormone problem. It was pretty obvious in the first prints I made. So, a few filters and a smudge tool or two later, I got this:



Again, I find in checking out the preview that you can't really tell what it is that was done, but my point is: GOOD! There should be an element of realism in head shots. I could have done soooooo much more to this photo to make it "better" but I figured I would probably look like this when I handed the audition panel the actual photo, and I for one did not want to endure the sniggers that would inevitably come with any plasticky over-retouched job I handed them. I mean, my lips are NOT glistening in the sun, My hair is a mess and probably will be in the audition. My glasses are crooked and to be honest, they are always crooked thanks to my habit of falling asleep in them.

In reviewing this post I find it is longer and more boring than I had expected, so I will just stop. My point is made with the link above. Perhaps I should have just posted that link and said WTF? I'm pretty sure that no matter what I say, no one will believe this is a real picture of me...right?