Scars & Work

I've been doing a lot of retouching at work these days since I am now in charge of all of our orders. So pretty much all day I go from file to file, face to face, using the clone, healing, and patch tools over and overrrr again. Fun right?

Well what starts happening when you do this day in and day out? You see people with under eye bags, and you want to pull out your tablet, hit 'S' on lighten at 20% opacity and just swoooop under the eyes a couple times. Voila!

Only, it doesn't work in real life. Darn.

So I came to a realization that when Eric and I get married and someone somewhere spends a couple days processing our images (ok who am I kidding, it will probably be me) what will they take out as blemishes/flaws and what will they leave in?

If you scroll down to the last posting you'll see a photo of Eric and I. I did NO retouching to the image. Not because there's none to be done, but because I loved the photo and didn't want to spend the time obsessing. Anyway, Eric has these adorable little freckles scattered across his face. An average retoucher would probably not remove them all but would certainly lighten them and remove about 40-50% of them. Also, you may notice I have scars on my forehead.. See below:





I had chicken pox, and instead of heeding the warnings of all the adults around me, I scratched the big one right on my forehead. A decent sized circular 'pit' (official term) is what I was left with for that indiscretion.

I also walked into a coffee table when I was a toddler. Mom calls it walking into, Dad calls it fell onto. Either way, silly me. A half moon shaped scar from the stitches sits pleasantly next to the circular pit.

On my 6th birthday, I fell onto a filing cabinet. I remember it vividly. I thought it was a great idea to get up on the dining room chair to reach for the festive birthday balloons, lost my balance and !%WHAM#@! Forehead smacked into the corner of the metal filing cabinet (for some reason located in the dining room? Confusion.) 5 stitches later, we were walking into the parking garage of the ER and my dad says,

"So, it's your 6th birthday..."

yea?

"And you got 5 stitches..."

ok?

"Why don't we go back in for another so you can have 6 stitches on your 6th birthday!"

I'm pretty sure I cried.

Soooo anyway, my point is coming. Mom always said I had such a giant forehead it had to hit everything first when I fell. I'd say that is kind of embarrassing, but hey, it's part of who I am! Scars and all. Freckles and moles and all.

So retouchers beware! Sometimes you may find people content with their imperfections, flaws, or scars.

Sometimes it just adds to the story of how we came to be who we are today.