photo results and retouching

Sometimes it's just nice to know you haven't lost your touch, you know?
After Fox's photoshoot on Sunday I will admit that I was a little twitchy about how the shots were going to come out. Maybe I've just been working in digital too long (and not working with people for quite a while)... I did notice the difference when I was shooting, if only that when I shoot on film I don't tend to tilt the camera very much... it's all very vertical and horizontal... whereas in digital I shoot all over the place. Of course that could be because I don't have to worry about wasting film on shots that are just too tilted or whatever with a digital. But, as usual, I digress...

And of course after the phonecall on Monday night I had to wait until today before I saw the shots... and patience, not my strong suit. But I managed fine.

Anyway, I picked Fox up at work, brought him back to North Adelaide to the lab, picked up the shots and then we went for a coffee to have a look at the shots (and also so that my blonde boy at the lab could burn the CD, since he couldn't remember if I wanted one or not... but that was only going to take about ten minutes). And we were both quite pleased with the final results (always a bonus).

Yeah, some of the shots didn't quite work, but you get that on every single roll. But there were actually a large proportion of quite good shots. So obviously I haven't lost my eye even though it's been forever since I shot people.

The amusing thing is that I was so wrapped up in the photos as we went through them the first time that I don't remember seeing Fox drink his coffee, or eat his little cake... and while I remember eating my little cake, I don't even remember finishing my coffee... but I must have.

After we were done picking out the best ones for him to use online, we came back here and I went through the ten or so shots and retouched them all for him... mostly to get rid of the bits of white fluff that always seem to show up on the black and white rolls of film (I'm guessing from when they feed the negatives into their scanning machine while wearing the white cotton gloves)... funnily enough there are never anywhere near as many white specks when they do a colour roll, so I have no idea what the hell that's about.

I did notice that going through and retouching all the little specks started to become almost like a Zen exercise after a while... find spot, click, move on... and I'm sure that I probably edited a bunch that would have disappeared when I resized the image anyway, but I'm used to working with the shots at a big size. I've mentioned it before, but once I get all focused in on a Photoshop project, whether it's retouching or whatever, I totally lose track of time... I even forgot to take a drink after specifically going to the fridge to get a bottle of water.

I've never retouched an image while the model was sitting there next to me though... which was interesting... he did pick up some "flaws" that I might not have necessarily seen on my own, but I might have taken even longer if Fox hadn't been here.

Oh, and I did call him on the whole "I want to come with you when you pick the shots up" thing while I was Zenning on the retouching... and I was right, it was because he got twitchy about me having access to all the shots for several days. Like I told him, I understood the reasoning, but he was just a silly rabbit... I think I just wanted him to know that I knew what he was up to.

All up, I think it took three hours for the retouching and whatever, give or take... we did upload them online for him, so that took a little while too, and I burned the finished versions onto CD for him (and managed to knock over the glass of grape juice I'd poured for him in the process... and if I gave a crap about my carpet it would bother me more... but I think I got most of it up). And then when we were finished with that I drove him home... but of course, by the time I got home again it was pretty much 8:30, and I hadn't had any dinner, actually I hadn't had anything apart from the lemon tart since lunchtime, and while I'm sure I could have taken something out of the freezer or something, I honestly couldn't be bothered, so I just went and got pizza instead. Not the healthiest option, but hey, screw it.

Now I just need to work out which images I actually want to use and then go through and retouch them again...

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