photo theory

i've had a bit of a photography revelation this week after stumbling across the absolutely stunning work of barb uil. barb does portrait photography, mostly of babies and young children but also of families and her work is breathtaking. just breathtaking. beautiful angles, crops, saturation, i wandered through her site and blog for over an hour, just entranced. i pondered how she had such a consistent, great vibe to all of her photos and in reading her "details" section, was struck by the beautifully crafted statement that "After the session, each photograph is handcrafted individually." it doesn't say whether barb shoots digitally or on film but it got me thinking about the fine tuning of photographs outside the camera. for the last couple of years i've been pretty stubborn in NOT touching up any of my images in photoshop - if they didn't come out the way i wanted them straight from the camera, they just were considered a failure, making the ones i was happy with so much more of an achievement (to me). i sort of felt that because i use photoshop professionally everyday it was almost cheating to "fix up" my images, like it was taking away from any success i had with my camera. now before anyone starts composing me an email telling me off about my "holier than thou" attitude, let me first off say that it was a personal choice that didn't stop me from admiring other peoples images and that, as mentioned earlier, i've had a change of heart about this theory recently. i thought about barb uil meticulously touching up her brilliant photos to ensure that each one is a true work of art and reflective of her style. and i thought about my early photography classes and mucking about with my images on the developer, doing essentially all of the same things that i could do in photoshop. and i realized i've been a bit of an idiot.

SO, the crux of all this is that i will be employing my photoshop skills a little bit more, when needed, to my pics and this makes me pretty excited, like i have yet another toy to play with. here are a couple of shots of new oobees i took in bendigo the other week. i was happy with the compositions but it was a pretty grey day when i took them and the colours were all a bit dark and grey as well. a little photoshop and time and voila! post worthy pics!


dark grey wool felt with kool-aid dyed pink felt face, ears,
tail and belly button, stuffed with wool fleece.


vintage cotton floral print with beige felt face, ears
and tail, stuffed with wool fleece.


lime green velvety fabric, content unknown, with tan felt face,
ears and tail and bellybutton, stuffed with polyfil.