It's March 1 and a Sunday, the start of a new week and a new month.  Seems like a good time to start a new habit; specifically, blogging about my photography work.

The weather this weekend didn't lend itself to a lot of actual shooting.  (Well, it wasn't inspiring to me anyway.  I'm sure there was someone else that was out there making beautiful images.)  Instead, I spent a fair amount of time in front of the computer studying various sources of information to improve my photo techniques, photo processing, photo business/marketing, etc.  Of particular note, I spent a fair amount of time working on my retouching skills in Photoshop.  As I endeavor to make special images of people, or people and their four-legged companions, the ability to make adjustments to skin tone and texture become much more valuable.  After practicing a bit, I set out to apply all that I had learned to just one image today.  You can see it below.

Now Chera is a beautiful woman and Bram is a gorgeous young boy, but studio lighting can bring out every flaw and, frankly, I don't always catch every bad shadow that's being cast while shooting.  So, unlike photographing the fur in dogs, which is fairly forgiving, human skin typically needs a little "help" to look its best.  I'm far from being a retouch professional (there are people who do just that, full-time, for high-end glamour photography) and I'm sure the changes I've made here could be made even better, but I think they get the job done.  My goal is to make adjustments, but NOT to the extent that I completely change the look of the person or eliminate distinguishing features.  Of course, what woman doesn't want to lose a few wrinkles and look a little younger?  So there is some of that involved.

You can see the before (left image) and after (right image) below.  Feel free to give me your own critique!