Airbrushing and Concrete Layering

I was accused a while back of not airbrushing my models, but that I concrete layer them. Amusing, and *at the time*, most likely very true.

Now there has been all this hype of late about warnings on photographs that have been edited ( http://www.news24.com/Content/Entertainment/International/1044/933248d74aee4a1e8e138bdd1f4cdcfe/21-09-2009-09-04/Fashion_photo_warning_debated ) and the new Dove Evolution Videos ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U ), wich is a great... kinda.

But where does that leave me? I agree that all this airbrushing and over editing is bad, there are so many young people out there that keep going on about how they are not photogenic. Which is bullshit. Everybody is photogenic - except maybe me :P

The benchmarks set are unrealistic. And I think they are unrealistic on both sides of the fence. I'm not going to stop editing my photos, including airbrushing. My view on this is that when you run around in your own mind, you dont have pimples, since those come and go. Bad skin, pfft, it'll vanish in time. So why do you have to remember it in your images?

I do draw the line on body warping though. I downloaded the trail version of Portrait Professional 9 ( www.portraitprofessional.com ) and in all honesty, that program scared me. If you change the shape of somebodies eye's, alter the jawline, then that person is not the person you took a photograph of!

I'd be insulted if somebody took a photograph of me and then warped it. My skew jaw is mine, its what makes me, or actually, what has made me who I am today. My pimple isn't, so that can go :)

Now to go on a side track, if we are going to have to one day put warning on our edited photographs, where does the line stop? Am I no longer allowed to play with my lighting? If I alter light then I might alter skin tones and then I might give the impression of changing somebodies race? Arggh... ok.. Well, I'm just going to keep on doing what I do, and if anybody moans, I'll just say it's art.