Occasionally I get questions about how much editing can change a picture, so I wanted to post an example of the difference and the steps I take when editing a photo.  There are definitely different styles as well as levels of editing, as I'm sure you have seen some of those videos where somebody gets a whole new face and body courtesy of Photoshop.  I don't go anywhere near that far.  Basically I remove or reduce distractions such as blemishes, wrinkles, stray hairs, under eye circles, spinach between teeth etc.  Most of the time if you were just talking to someone your brain would filter much of that out, but when looking at a picture sometimes your eyes are drawn to these small things, so poof, they are gone.

• This first photo is pretty close to what came out of the camera, with some minor adjustments to exposure and cropping for a LinkedIn Profile picture.  After your session you will get a gallery with a bunch of pictures in this state to choose from.

• After I get your selection I start by removing and reducing the distractions.  As you can see from this photo, most things are the same, the photo just looks a smoothed out.

• Once everything looks good with the face, I'll go to work on making some additional tweaks o the color, exposure, sharpness, clarity and anything else needed to make the final photo look great.  This is when I would send you the link to your finished gallery where you can download your images, order prints, and share online.

• Occasionally, I'll get inspired to take it another step by turning the whole thing into a work of art resembling a completely different medium and style such as this pointillism masterpiece.  Requests from clients can also illicit this type of inspiration.