Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

[blohan]

Sorry for the abrasive thread, I don't plan to stay here, I came across this board while looking for information on how to get the Vogue look, now I am not big on retouching, I like detail, realism and I try to get everything right on the shot. I'm not naive, I know retouching has been around since the first photographs were produced, but I don't like working unnecessarily, I cannot spend 2 days on a photograph, if you get it right on the shot, you don't have to.

I'm also a huge Madonna fan, and in the last few years a lot of outtakes have come out from her photoshoots were she frankly looks horrific. She has been mainly working with Steven Klein and Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot, and let me tell you, those guys are absolute frauds. They don't know how to shoot, period. You DO NOT ALLOW A SUBJECT TO WALK ON A SET LOOKING LIKE THIS:

http://41.media.tumblr.com/0ac6b4427...xb20o1_400.jpg

http://blowhan.tumblr.com/image/114262963658

http://41.media.tumblr.com/38a3316e2...b20o1_1280.jpg

bad makeup, badly fitted wig, dirty eyelashes, etc, etc, etc, the examples are all over the net and they are ungodly.

The saddest part is that, she truly does not look this way in real life, they make her look bad because they don't care, the poor retoucher will fix it later. By my calculation it would take almost an ENTIRE WEEK just to reconstruct the hairline and eliminate all the frizzy hair covering her face, and redoing her makeup and ironing her dress to get the picture to printing stage, which is what they did with her spread of w magazine 2009 which is where the pictures come from.

It's sad really, this guys are total frauds, someone else does the true work, they take the credit because they are "cool" meanwhile more talented artists may never get the chance because they are not cool people if you know what I mean.

[Repairman]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

'Bad makeup, badly fitted wig, dirty eyelashes' - my kinda gal! Actually, I think she looks pretty good for 56.

[blohan]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I forgot bad lighting too, the outtakes have really bad lighting too. Too dark, too bright, the finished pictures have nothing to do with them.

[skoobey]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I cannot spend 2 days on a photograph, if you get it right on the shot, you don't have to.

No need to read any further. Retouching is about taking a capture and turning it into art. Going from capture to an image.

You can't get those tonal transitions in camera, any camera film, digital and with any light. It can't be done. Only way to get them is by painting, but painting takes way too much time, so here comes photography + post production. Retouching is not fixing, even though it can include fixing, but it is enhancing.

You don't need to spend two days on a photograph, in fact 99,99% won't. We are here to work with the best, those 0,01% who know why they need the retouching and what for.

P.S. I don;t think you realize just how much work is involved anyway, I basically made up the entire hair for the hair campaign I worked on recently. Fixing doesn't take that long, but balancing everything out always takes a lot of time. One thing that is always hard to work with is patterns.

[blohan]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

No need to read any further. Retouching is a bout taking a capture and turning it into art. Going from capture to an image.

You can't get those tonal transitions in camera, any camera film, digital and with any light. It can't be done. Only way to get them is by painting, but painting takes way too much time, so here comes photography + post production. Retouching is not fixing, even though it can include fixing, but it is enhancing.

You don't need to spend two days on a photograph, in fact 99,99% won't. We are here to work with the best, those 0,01% who know why they need the retouching and what for.

You couldn't be more wrong even if you tried. Why don't you go and see a Weston negative, a George Hurrell negative, an Edward Steichen negative and the retouching that they need is minimal, why? Because you don't do the art in the retouching, you do it on camera, if you're an artist.

If you are just a photographer, you shoot whatever and then you try to make art in post production, like you said, one of the most mediocre things I've ever heard, and it's usually somebody else doing it, not even the photographer.

[skoobey]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I said the exact opposite. That it is about art+art=retouched image. Great capture + great retouching=great image. Noone looks perfect, and that particular madonna shoot was pretty well executed by the entire team. That is how people look, once you get through enough shoots you'll realize what is what.

I am not trying to argue, I' just saying that they do know what they're doing.

[blohan]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I said the exact opposite. That it is about art+art=retouched image. Great capture + great retouching=great image. Noone looks perfect, and that particular madonna shoot was pretty well executed by the entire team. That is how people look, once you get through enough shoots you'll realize what is what.

I am not trying to argue, I' just saying that they do know what they're doing.

No they do not know what they are doing. You don't allow anyone to go in front of a lens with the hairline of your wig being a total disaster that you are going to have to basically reconstruct from zero in post production. You don't let your subject go with wrinkly clothes in front of a lens. You don't let anyone with bad makeup go in front of the lens. This is not a person that comes in for a wallet portraits, this is a major photoshoot for a major publication and the unretouched photographs are a disaster.

Post production does not exist to create the picture, PERIOD. You don't go into post production to spend an entire week rebuilding a hairline, which believe me, that's what it must have taken to the poor box design people to fix Steven Klein's raw files, that is the point. Steven Klein pictures, Marcus and Alas pictures are built from scratch on post production. Hell they can even be phone pictures, it wouldn't matter because their negatives and digital files are so terrible to begin with. I have seen them, they are all over the net and they are frauds, period.

You don't know what you speak of, google for the unretouched files, or better yet, don't because you'll surely come back with some excuse as to how it is "art" what they do.

[skoobey]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I do it all the time, it takes me an hour for this type of thing, maybe less depending on the resolution of the file.

What you don't realize is that retouchers hours are much cheaper than top celebrities hours so, if you have a chance to shoot someone and they tell you it's this much time for so many look changes, then everyone does their best in the timeframe and rest is left to post production. Bad photography is bad lighting, bad angles, awkward poses, lost focus, motion blur where there souldn't be; I see none of that here.

P.S. I get your disappointment, but no one ever claimed that they knew a magic secret to pull those looks straight out of the camera. That is not how the world works.

[AKMac]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

.......By my calculation it would take almost an ENTIRE WEEK just to reconstruct the hairline and eliminate all the frizzy hair covering her face, and redoing her makeup and ironing her dress to get the picture to printing stage.............

An entire week? Sorry, is that a typo? Did you perhaps mean "day"? Or maybe you meant hour?

[klev]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

Post production does not exist to create the picture, PERIOD. You don't go into post production to spend an entire week rebuilding a hairline, which believe me, that's what it must have taken to the poor box design people to fix Steven Klein's raw files, that is the point.

I'm not sure whether you're trolling here, but it's obvious that you don't speak from experience. As for the photographers with perfect negatives, digital image processing doesn't really work that way. Response differs quite a bit from some of the various films. Even these guys chose specific films, development processes, and papers to achieve certain aesthetics, but that is really beside the point. The ones you complain about managed to build their own brands that have generated some form of value for their clients. None of those clients care how the images were produced.

[Doug Nelson]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I'm not sure whether you're trolling here

Oh, I am sure of it

[blohan]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

I'm not sure whether you're trolling here, but it's obvious that you don't speak from experience. As for the photographers with perfect negatives, digital image processing doesn't really work that way. Response differs quite a bit from some of the various films. Even these guys chose specific films, development processes, and papers to achieve certain aesthetics, but that is really beside the point. The ones you complain about managed to build their own brands that have generated some form of value for their clients. None of those clients care how the images were produced.

And that is why none of their subjects look even real.

[blohan]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

An entire week? Sorry, is that a typo? Did you perhaps mean "day"? Or maybe you meant hour?

No I meant a week, you clearly haven't seen the finished editorial and you clearly haven't seen the original photographs, were her hairline basically had to be reconstructed from scratch because you can see where the wig ends and her real scalp begins, as well as the wig adhesive basically, all of which has to be erased and rebuilt on photoshop because they couldn't bother to get it right in the shot.

[Flashtones]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

blohan, please post the before/afters you speak of. You've got my curiosity.

[AKMac]

Re: Steven Klein, Mert and Marcus, all frauds.

No I meant a week, you clearly haven't seen the finished editorial and you clearly haven't seen the original photographs, were her hairline basically had to be reconstructed from scratch because you can see where the wig ends and her real scalp begins, as well as the wig adhesive basically, all of which has to be erased and rebuilt on photoshop because they couldn't bother to get it right in the shot.

It wouldn't surprise me if it took a month of post production to achieve the final results. Mert and Marcus are great artists and their work is highly respected by those who know what they're talking about. You, on the other hand, are completely missing the point. The relatively short time required to fix hairlines etc is almost an irrelevance.