I love this photo because it demonstrates appropriate editing.
I made a lovely image of a beautiful woman. I could have been a purist, said DONE! and handed it over. Or I could have given her the 'COSMO' edit and airbrushed her until she looked twenty again. But that would have obliterated everything that makes her unique and beautiful, in my opinion. Instead, I chose to enhance rather than cover up. It was a spa visit for the photo really.
We are all so critical of images of ourselves. I don't know if this is our airbrushed cultural mentality or just that we don't take the time to study ourselves and each other until we are frozen within a frame. But sometimes a photo can seem a little too real, a bit too 'Hi-Def'. My philosophy of photo editing is simply to dust off that top layer of an image. You know, that one that makes us wrinkle our nose up and start counting our flaws. I want to remove that layer to get to the one underneath that makes us smile and say, " I look great/ beautiful/ handsome. That's my favorite picture of me ever!" When I hear that, I know that I have done my job.
