Skater: Han Grenade
Series: Faces of Derby
BEFORE & AFTER - EDITING MENTALITY
Because these portraits where shot at a training camp, most of the skaters where sweaty and flushed from the exercises they had been doing. This is a calculated risk to photograph people like this because they are potentially not going to look the greatest and when using sharp lenses and good lights, all the flaws are going to come out.
My intention of these portraits isn't to make the images as slick as say a fashion or beauty portrait, but to show the skaters as they really are. To me, the blemishes in this style of portrait is actually distracting. I could easily just turn the images to black and white and a lot of the issues would be resolved, but I wanted colour. So my editing philosophy for these portraits is fairly simple. Take out anything that has been added in from exertion, mainly on a skin level. Keep most of the flaws that each skater has normally has (ie. leave permanent marks, etc). Fix any hair or clothes that I find really distracting and overall make a clean profile that doesn't completely show how sweaty and exhausted the skater actually is.
With permission from Han, I have created a basic animated GIF of the above picture edit. Note, GIF only have 256 colours, therefore don't look for detail but watch at the transition.
Beginning to End - A basic example of a portrait edit.
