Photoshop addiction
I wish I had never discovers PS. Now, I have always improved my pics, but that consisted mainly in re-cropping, changing colour curves and depending, either making them pop more or denoising them. Plus of course some blur or mask. And I was fine with that.
But PS is a different universe and the more I discover the more I want to use. You can eliminate any skin imperfection, change perspective, make someone look taller or shorter, slimmer or fatter, modify contours even, making say boobs look smaller and eyes and lips bigger... And I'm talking here only about modifications which take seconds rather than minutes to do...
Now of course all my models love this, they all look like they have just stepped down from a Playboy centrefold. No, they don't look like they have plastic skin, but still, they do look 10 years younger and very sexy. In fact, they all are very sexy but I just want them to like my pics so much, just to thank them for being so kind to take their kit of in front of my camera... Frankly, the only pics I only very lightly touch up are mine - and still, I do it sometimes. But I do look older in pics taken with a phone five years ago than on those taken with a camera today, although I normally use only the free editting app which I have on my tablet, not PS for my pics. Still a bit too much, after seeing my pics you would be disappointed to meet me on a nudist beach in real life.
On the one hand, I want to capture and celebrate beauty, fleeting, fragile and useless as it is in our world obsessed with hatred, mass murders and destruction. And I think women's body is so beautiful and all these friends of mine (and also models whom I barely know) are so sexy and attractive. On the other, I sometimes feel like I am just adding not more beauty but more fakes to the world. More unattainable standards of sexiness, more false promises of a Barbie world, a world where all women are forever beautiful and sexy and desirable and sexual.
I took a series of nude pics of Vero's Mom - what was it, three months ago? She is 60 and looked like a natural 60 yo. It is true that meanwhile she started to be a gym regular and lost 6 kg. She actually looks like she has lost more. She says that she feels 20 years younger (good for her) and she does look a lot better so I proposed to do a new shot and she agreed. She was seducing and teasing and accepted (or rather proposed) to go far more erotic than the first time, including some open legs and soft BDSM. I touched up those pics, she looks so young and desirable (not that she isn't naturally, but I just amplified her attraction) in those pics that, after seeing them and Vero's private pics, she now asks whether I would be ok with her posing for some very erotic pics like Vero, if possible with D's participation. I don't mind it of course, even though I think she has a bit of a crush on D, in fact I wouldn't mind it even if they went the full nine yards in front of my camera and I don't think D would refuse that. And I am happy that I have helped her discover this new joy and feel younger and all.
But the question remains: am I not creating unreasonable expectations by abusing PS? In our world of "paraitre au lie d'etre" (appear instead of being), is this continuous race for youthfulness and beauty reasonable? Shouldn't we just accept that we are imperfect, grow old, lose our attractiveness, then suffer and die? And was I wrong to create a group about elegance on a site about nudism (true, nudism not naturism) while for many nudists this lifestyle is about body acceptance where older, out of shape gents are to be celebrated as much as young, sexy ladies?
Anyway. I do know that this is a boring and sad topic, but I don't feel well today and to compensate if you want tomorrow I could tell you about my first (and likely last) experience with a bit of teasing, flashing and exhibitionism which my two new young friends, whom I converted, together with their husbands, to nudism during my holidays, did (and also also obliged me, albeit to a more limited extent, to do). I somehow feel that you would like that better.
It is addictive. I have used PS for years for my business.
There isn't anything wrong with touching up something here or there, but Nudism is about acceptance, both for us who have surpassed the prime of our lives and carry around a bit more than we wish we had. We can be accepted as we are, elegant or otherwise, touched up or not, and the most likely place is with other nudists.
And yes, your stories are always appreciated, especially ones that include photography.
The urge to *fix* everything is quite large in the photography world. I had a late friend who was an award winning photographer and he touched up his work as needed though I suspect it wasnt much. I have the whole Adobe package but have used it only minimally. My old digital camera does quite well with stationary shots and thats all I shoot. The above said, I try and make my limited photography efforts the sum of the scene. Though obviously, you have a primary subject but the other parts of the shot serve to complete and augment it. It really is the totality of the shot. Thats just my two-cents worth but that same mindset appears to be prevalent on most of the ENL shots.
We all think of ourselves as younger and like to look that way again. Marie did some glamorous shots this summer. Yes she looked twenty years younger, but she agreed it wasnt her.
I always tell young nudists to get as many nude shots of themselves now so they can look back and say SEE I WAS PRETTY. Lol
I wish I had never discovers PS. Now, I have always improved my pics, but that consisted mainly in re-cropping, changing colour curves and depending, either making them pop more or denoising them. Plus of course some blur or mask. And I was fine with that.But PS is a different universe and the more I discover the more I want to use. You can eliminate any skin imperfection, change perspective, make someone look taller or shorter, slimmer or fatter, modify contours even, making say boobs look smaller and eyes and lips bigger... And I'm talking here only about modifications which take seconds rather than minutes to do...Now of course all my models love this, they all look like they have just stepped down from a Playboy centrefold. No, they don't look like they have plastic skin, but still, they do look 10 years younger and very sexy. In fact, they all are very sexy but I just want them to like my pics so much, just to thank them for being so kind to take their kit of in front of my camera... Frankly, the only pics I only very lightly touch up are mine - and still, I do it sometimes. But I do look older in pics taken with a phone five years ago than on those taken with a camera today, although I normally use only the free editting app which I have on my tablet, not PS for my pics. Still a bit too much, after seeing my pics you would be disappointed to meet me on a nudist beach in real life.On the one hand, I want to capture and celebrate beauty, fleeting, fragile and useless as it is in our world obsessed with hatred, mass murders and destruction. And I think women's body is so beautiful and all these friends of mine (and also models whom I barely know) are so sexy and attractive. On the other, I sometimes feel like I am just adding not more beauty but more fakes to the world. More unattainable standards of sexiness, more false promises of a Barbie world, a world where all women are forever beautiful and sexy and desirable and sexual.I took a series of nude pics of Vero's Mom - what was it, three months ago? She is 60 and looked like a natural 60 yo. It is true that meanwhile she started to be a gym regular and lost 6 kg. She actually looks like she has lost more. She says that she feels 20 years younger (good for her) and she does look a lot better so I proposed to do a new shot and she agreed. She was seducing and teasing and accepted (or rather proposed) to go far more erotic than the first time, including some open legs and soft BDSM. I touched up those pics, she looks so young and desirable (not that she isn't naturally, but I just amplified her attraction) in those pics that, after seeing them and Vero's private pics, she now asks whether I would be ok with her posing for some very erotic pics like Vero, if possible with D's participation. I don't mind it of course, even though I think she has a bit of a crush on D, in fact I wouldn't mind it even if they went the full nine yards in front of my camera and I don't think D would refuse that. And I am happy that I have helped her discover this new joy and feel younger and all.But the question remains: am I not creating unreasonable expectations by abusing PS? In our world of "paraitre au lie d'etre" (appear instead of being), is this continuous race for youthfulness and beauty reasonable? Shouldn't we just accept that we are imperfect, grow old, lose our attractiveness, then suffer and die? And was I wrong to create a group about elegance on a site about nudism (true, nudism not naturism) while for many nudists this lifestyle is about body acceptance where older, out of shape gents are to be celebrated as much as young, sexy ladies?Anyway. I do know that this is a boring and sad topic, but I don't feel well today and to compensate if you want tomorrow I could tell you about my first (and likely last) experience with a bit of teasing, flashing and exhibitionism which my two new young friends, whom I converted, together with their husbands, to nudism during my holidays, did (and also also obliged me, albeit to a more limited extent, to do). I somehow feel that you would like that better.
Maybe we need to see a before and after shop pic so to get an idea of the magic of the photoshop at work. Although that would underline the illusion.
Not unless we start a topic about photo editing. Why not a comparative with our faces before and after makeup, our boobs arms down and arms up etc. Elegant ladies need to keep some magic - and they would shed it only if and when they discuss technicalities.
A pregnant topic for sure and thank you for how deep you've allowed us into your thoughts, Flora. I hope today has you feeling better. Getting old isn't for wimps, it is terribly true.
Artists work outside of reality, from the very first cave paintings somewhere around forty thousand years ago until that photo-shopped picture just published with every freckle removed. Reality is only the beginning of the process. I remember one of my earlier English teachers stressing the point that all writers lie, with words being another form of art. Now that we have photography, and with it, photographic manipulation, it simply means that the lies are much easier to produce. Is this bad? I don't feel that way, as long as the final product is recognized as art, not being offered as or confused with reality.
Soon after the very first photographs of the early nineteenth century were produced, people began to screw around with them to create something that wasn't originally there; earlier masters in the last century, like the talents of Ansel Adams who, by using darkroom exposure techniques like burning and dodging, made his art into something altogether incredible, and him into a household word.
Indeed, long before photography was invented, who here doubts that Leonardo's view of Mona Lisa was unrealistic? Some have suggested that the original subject was Leo himself, which I find humorously curious, but there will never be a way to know what he was looking at when he produced that one thought-provoking piece, or if there was a real life subject in front of him at all when brush hit canvas. There is creation through innovation, and photoshop and the like are just another set of tools in a long line of ways for the artist to find his or her voice.
When my ex (an amateur photog) learned that Ansel Adams had been screwing around in the darkroom to create his art, she was truly upset. I didn't know what to say to her to calm her down from wanting to pull that breathtaking print of his off the wall. When the viewer learns of the artist's tools, it can initially be jarring to the senses. In fact that happened to me recently, when I saw a friend's smartphone photo collection, commenting as I looked back and forth between her phone and her face and body, that she looked almost like a different person. It was nothing more than the phone's instantly-applied software taking away what some might call imperfections. It's those that make us who we are, but who am I to poo poo a technology that makes the picture taker happy with the end product? It is their art, not mine. But as the beholder, I generally prefer the unedited version.
Does this make me a better nudist? No. I'm only another set of eyes attached to a brain that loves the sight of all bodies unadorned, whether by clothes or by alteration, but who nevertheless can appreciate the world through another's eyes and find the beauty which comes from within their soul, from somewhere between reality and their vision. I feel as though I've slipped into Rod Serling's voice!
Thank you Wildwilly1 for this thoughtful reply. An artist and a con artist have many things in common: they both embellish reality to stimulate artificial emotions which they can use to their advantage. But dodging and burning was innovative and hard, using Photoshop is old and easy. So I am closer to a con artist than to an artist myself, even if I don't derive any material, just some ego strengthening advantage by posting embellished pics and stories in a group followed by ten people. And in this quest for beauty and elegance in any and all forms I am discouraging rather than encouraging participation. But such is the vanity of con artists, such is the hubris of former beauty queens.
Thank you Wildwilly1 for this thoughtful reply. An artist and a con artist have many things in common: they both embellish reality to stimulate artificial emotions which they can use to their advantage. But dodging and burning was innovative and hard, using Photoshop is old and easy. So I am closer to a con artist than to an artist myself, even if I don't derive any material, just some ego strengthening advantage by posting embellished pics and stories in a group followed by ten people. And in this quest for beauty and elegance in any and all forms I am discouraging rather than encouraging participation. But such is the vanity of con artists, such is the hubris of former beauty queens.
You are my favorite con artist in TN if you deem to call yourself that. The blush you bring out of me now, after having read your appreciative response and additional thoughts, is an unexpected pleasure as it washes over my whole body, bringing a rosy glow - to some parts a little more than others.
Instagram has a whole host of filters. So many girls are addicted to them. They won't post anything until they think they have the perfect picture.
Now, girls like Flora and I have no need for such things. You don't fuck with perfection. lol
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