Retouching Portraits

I always like to keep any retouching of my photos to a minimum. Some post-production work is inevitable with this type of location shoot, where I have less control over the conditions. In some cases the client will ask me to make quite extensive changes, which can sometimes take years off the subject’s appearance. Read the background story below (including an explanation about the pineapple!) or click here for detailed before/after comparisons.

The Client

Prior to 2020, shooting events made up most of my regular work. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, strict social gathering restrictions were introduced that stopped public and private events of all kinds.

Around this time, I luckily took on a new client that operates a large chain of supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores in Asia. People were not dining out, due to restrictions that affected restaurants and bars, so food and drink retail stores benefitted from a marked increase in business. Soon I was working on three different projects with this new client, which required product photos, interior photos, and portraits.

The company started to offer an extensive range of their own branded products, so I spent many hours photographing packets of frozen peas, packets of frozen carrots, packets of frozen peas AND carrots, etc… Not the most interesting work, but it kept the cash rolling in during difficult times.

The interior photos were required for supermarkets that were being renovated and rebranded. I would visit stores before and after renovations to document the changes. Images were also needed to fill the company’s image library with wide and detail shots that showed the new style of store.

The new-look supermarkets had large posters showing the store manager at the entrance, so this is where the portrait shooting came in.

Shooting portraits in the Supermarket

To fit in with daily business operations, each manager was photographed separately in their own supermarket, which presented a few specific challenges.

Getting the right lighting balance for each portrait could be tricky because every location would have a different combination of daylight, LED lighting, incandescent bulbs, and fluorescent tubes.

Space is precious in Hong Kong’s built-up areas so shelves and products were often crammed into the stores, meaning the shopping aisles could be very narrow. With limited space to work in, I used a simple set-up of one light and one reflector, which could be easily replicated in each location. When all the equipment had been set up, a curious crowd of shoppers would often gather around to see what was happening, which didn’t help!

We had to work swiftly during Covid because wearing a mask was mandatory in areas open to the public. After a few test photos, it was mask off, a few shots, then mask back on again, before anyone got fined!

The shoot itself was normally over in a matter of minutes, depending on how easy the subject was to work with. Back at the studio, a couple of hours would then be spent on the computer to digitally alter the photograph and prepare it for printing.

Retouching

For consistency across all locations, I had to replace the original portrait’s background with a standard interior photo of the flagship store. Then I’d need to do various degrees of retouching on the store manager, depending on how photogenic they were.

The portraits were printed close to life-size, which is not very forgiving, so I used retouching software to remove pimples, brighten teeth, smooth-out wrinkles, and remove any wayward hairs. Sometimes, after seeing the portrait, more extensive work was requested by head office. This could involve fixing wonky or missing teeth, filling in thinning hair, reshaping eyebrows, etc. On a couple of occasions, I was asked to make the manager’s eyes larger! I often wondered how each manager would react when they came face-to-face with their poster, and their new visage.

Pineapple???… Why???

The company’s portrait style guide specified that the manager had to hold a pineapple, which represents good fortune and a hospitable welcome in both eastern and western cultures. In some seasons it was hard to find a ripe pineapple in the store, so retouching was also required to beautify the fruity prop! It would have been much easier if head office had allowed me to use a tin of pineapple slices instead!

Each portrait session would begin by casting candidate pineapples from the shop’s display shelves. As a result, I now feel as qualified as the Man from Del Monte when it comes to picking pineapples!