TA: Hey, check out these two retouched images from Echolilia I just got back. Laura Johnston did the post production on them.
m
Post production on your personal project? This isn't an ad shoot. Why did you do that?
m
TA: Just trying to make these gritty digital photographs look as beautiful as they can look...and take out some distracting stuff...while still looking real.
m
Beautiful? If you wanted that, why didn't you shoot it on film like everyone told you to?
m
TA: Oh, because I wanted to make the shots at blog speed and post 'em right away, be a blogstar, all of that. Nah...just kidding. It was part of the process- it allowed Eli and I to come up with the pose, shoot it, we'd both look at the shots, and then improvise from there. We needed that instant gratification to figure out how to make the shots better, or different, or figure out what would work together. And the with the scanner...it kind of worked in the same way. Just hard to hold an arm on the scanner still for 8 minutes, but sometimes it worked.
m
But now you are going back to fix everything? Struggling to make it look decent?
m
TA:Yes. But I did want this project to be made up of the consumer grade things around the house...and all the shots are from around the house, you know? Like a desktop scanner from Office Max, a consumer grade camera, prints from an inkjet printer, that type of thing. Do you buy that ?
m
Sorry, still no. But that was a good try.
4 comments:
Did she flatten out the feet on the tube one? I still love that one.
I don't know, but seems to me that credibility is so important to a project like this, the last thing you want is to be too slick.
G-
Yes, I hear you on that. I think the thing that allowed me to be open to this was a saw the work of a retoucher who did work on some of Larry Sultan's work that is very reality based. It still all looked real, but just didn't look rough and like bad technique. With this Echolilia stuff, lots of the shots are done on a cheap digital, low light, pushed in the processing, and done in maybe 7 minutes max...in an attempt to keep up with the attention span of a child. I'm not good enough with digital to make these things look good, so I view the retouching in the same way I'd view having a good printer print the work.
You don't have to agree with this, of course, I'm just sharing my rationalization.
it's the image that counts, not how it has been made
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