Laughter lines are your best friend.
Do you look at pictures of yourself and want to airbrush the shit out of them?
It amazes me how many people still want their images retouched almost beyond recognition. If I remove your lines and especially your crow’s feet, I am taking away the substance of your expression.
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been“
Mark Twain
Don’t get me wrong, I always clean up your blemishes, but I believe editing should be subtle. (I’m always proud of my retouching when a client does not even notice what I’ve done.) I want to capture your personality and especially your smile as naturally as humanly possible, and that means your whole face, mouth, cheeks and eyes all lighting up with glorious cracks and lines.
In the mid-19th century, French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne used some pretty freaky methods of putting electric currents through facial tissue and taking photographs of the results. He discovered that a smile that shows genuine emotion uses the mouth and the cheeks that push up and form those gorgeous crows feet around the eyes.
Don’t worry; I don’t use any medieval torture to get you to smile, maybe the odd dad joke.
But the point is that when you are having your picture taken, you have to lose yourself a bit, not be too self-conscious.
The most important thing about a smile is that it is genuine!
So trust in the process; And don’t worry if there is anything you are really conscious about, we can always sort it out in post.
(I decided to use my own crow’s feet to illustrate my point.)
