In modern photography, much of the magic that creates great photos happens in a computer after the image is captured. Tools like Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom allow for all manners of enhancements to alter the original image. These tools are immensely helpful, but can be, and regularly are, abused.
Magazine covers, billboards, beauty product boxes and labels – we see instances of Photoshopping that go far beyond camera correction, and transform human beings into unrealistic versions of themselves, everywhere we go. Thighs and stomachs are sliced off women, arms are bulged and abs carved into men and skin is lightened and smoothed to appear whiter and flawless.
This is not the Kalon way. Turning a person’s appearance into a societal ideal does not allow their individuality to shine through. The “flaws” that are edited out of people are a major part of who they are, and are what other people love about that person. The goal of Kalon is to represent the unique and beautiful personalities of our customers as accurately as possible. Our Lightroom is used primarily for, as its name suggests, adding more light to our pictures (as mentioned in our last blog about the weather; Carrollwood can get pretty moody with the clouds).
More than just pretty faces, the people we work with are mothers, artists, rebels, dreamers and so on. That should be the focus of any picture, not pore-less skin and an artificially bleached smile. We leave the pounds that exist in place and don’t shift them anywhere they don’t exist. We celebrate the natural lightness of skin as well the natural darkness of it. We look for that authentic, crooked smile that friends and family recognize instead of performing digital surgery on the face.
The makeup artists and hairstylists we employ specialize in accentuating the beauty that already exists in the people we photograph. They are trained to highlight the traits that make people their own kind of beautiful. When people walk out of our studio, they can feel confident that they look like the best version of themselves, not a processed copy of the standard.
On the artistic side of editing, the right filter or brush can add extra magic to a photo of a séance, or make a pinup girl appear as a painting. These are the touches we love to add afterward to bring out the character and fun of our models and our photoshoots. Otherwise, our séances and pinup sessions are full of bright, natural human beings who are authentically beautiful inside and out.
See for yourself how little Photoshopping and Lightrooming is actually needed to capture real beauty by checking out our galleries, or coming in for your own appointment at our photo studio in Northdale (Tampa).
Kalon Imaging 