Twisted Mermaid, Bristol, 2008

Generally speaking, I don’t like to do much to my images in post-production.

I’ll tweak the tones and contrast and white balance of course, but those are things that existed prior to the digital age, and that I used to do in the darkroom. I also perform things like skin-retouching and perhaps minor reshaping here and there.

What I’m uncomfortable with is the fancy-pants stuff that people add to images after that. It’s not that I subscribe to any dogma about keeping the image ‘true’ or somesuch — it’s just that 9 out of 10 times it looks craptastic.

I want to create an impact with the subject of the image, not wow the limited audience of Photoshop users with my technical ability. Doing this can only detract from the subject, so that’s why it’s not my thing.

Above is an image which proves that there’s an exception to every rule (and that I’m allowed to change my mind whenever I want). The post-production here (actually quite a simple white balance shift) gave the image an intensity that I think serves to highlight Ms. Mermaid’s shape and expression, and it’s one of my favourites from our shoots so far.

Twisted Mermaid, Bristol, 2008

Photography is very subjective, and I find it hard to distance myself from images I’ve taken. This is someone else you’ll probably be seeing a lot of, the wonderful Twisted Mermaid.

I fell in love with this shot as soon as I flipped it around while editing it. I love the tone and the shape and the symmetry, and also the slight kink in the right eye which breaks the clean ‘perfection’ of the shot.

Ms. Mermaid wasn’t so enamoured, however. Of course, models bring their own, different, subjectivity to the images when they look at them so I didn’t question her reaction.

I still love it though.