I've had a teeny bit of fame and only momentary recognition garnered by touching the faces of some pretty famous people and some famously pretty people, like Faith Hill, Mel Karmazin, David Beckham (and Victoria, too), Kate Moss and Shania Twain. By touching, I don't mean that I disturbed their expensive Hamptons spray-on tans, but as a retoucher plus d'extraordinaire, on a pixel level. Kate Moss' pores are quite tiny, I assure you.
Of course, you probably know someone who knows someone who has an illicit copy of Photoshop on their laptop and who fancies himself l'artiste plus grande. Heck: two french phrases in two paragraphs - I'll come back and fix that when I can think of something better. Anyway, while it's true that any fourth-grader can remove diabolous red-eye or that giant zit from Aunt Livia's right cheek - on her face, mind you, as for those other pictures, well, you get the idea - it takes a lot more education and experience and, yes, talent, to correctly render the human form or to render it in such a way as to achieve a desired look.
Most of the top-of-the-pile retouchers are painters by vocation and most have advanced fine-art educations. Those who study fine art learn about form and light, texture and colour, and it takes years to find the core of one's talent in such a way as to have it accessible at will. This elite, of whom I am sad to say I am not a member, bill several thousand bucks per head or scene, with follow-ups (for client changes, not errors, that is, if the client would prefer this or that for whatever whimsy needs fulfillment that day) billing at half that again. And their stuff looks like art. It is art. You can see it in Glamour, Elle, Cosmo and WWD and on a bus shelter near you. Even the New Yorker profiled Pascal Dangin in 2008, who worked on the now-famous "real women" Dove campaign and is considered by many as probably the best of the best.
But the end may be near for Dangin and his priestly minion. Panasonic has come out with a camera that can retouch in-camera, going so far as to add "makeup" to the image so that you, too, can look your best when posting to your mySpace profile. This video from New York's New Tang Dynasty Television breaks it down:
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
He Be eBay'in' It A Little Too Much
Okay, so I was bored. So, I started scanning eBay, as I can for hours and hours if left alone too long, and I started noticing patterns in the images as they appeared next to each auction item.
Kinda kyute, right? A few pages later:
And then:
Just so you don't think I've started cross-dressing, I was looking for a "chandelier" and apparently, there's crap costume jewelry that's also called chandelier-style, so it came up in the search. What I want with a chandelier, I don't really know, come to think of it, I only like the ones that cost thousands and thousands of dollars and, for that kind of money, I can hire someone to walk around in a leather thong, holding a really big candle. But, I digress. What's so cool about this is that the auction listing are from different sellers, positioned in the way you see them, by software at eBay, without human intervention. So, there is randomness in the unsold junk of the unwashed masses after all. And in that, I find beauty.
Just so you don't think I've started cross-dressing, I was looking for a "chandelier" and apparently, there's crap costume jewelry that's also called chandelier-style, so it came up in the search. What I want with a chandelier, I don't really know, come to think of it, I only like the ones that cost thousands and thousands of dollars and, for that kind of money, I can hire someone to walk around in a leather thong, holding a really big candle. But, I digress. What's so cool about this is that the auction listing are from different sellers, positioned in the way you see them, by software at eBay, without human intervention. So, there is randomness in the unsold junk of the unwashed masses after all. And in that, I find beauty.Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Take The Quiz
With the advent of on-line media supplanting print media, or so we're told by mass media, and the coming, if not already arrived, supremacy of the iPad (full disclosure: I don't own one), it seems that we can expect flag-sized newsprint editions and glossy magazine volumes to soon disappear from the face of the earth. At least it may mean fewer trips to the recycling center. In the meantime, there's no shortage of this presumably now-antique form of communication. If one has doubts, a few long minutes at a WalMart checkout should serve to change minds.
I have here a 220 page issue of the March 2011 Cosmopolitan. You may be wondering why a guy has an issue of Cosmo open on his lap. Well, I read the articles, okay? What puzzles and frightens me is this concluding question: is this what women think about all day while guys are fantasizing about pimping their Volvos into monster trucks? If so, we're in more trouble than I thought.
Cosmopolitan Magazine, for those who have lived strictly in a monastery since birth, is a collection of advertising, sex and beauty tips and sex tips for the beautiful. It's also famous for its quizzes, where ladies can test any aspect of their existence, from the level of their ability to conquer the elusive orgasm to some other thing about orgasms. The March issue has a quiz on, you guessed it, sex. Here's an interesting question: "You're about to indulge in a steamy solo session, so you reach for . . .", followed by four brash choices, but I there's really no reason to go past letter A, "Your clitoris or breasts or both - no reason to wait." Exactly. Good enough for me. However, I'm not a woman, at least, I don't think I am, and the purpose of the test is to suss out what kind of sexual deviant you actually are. Enough A answers, and your "pleasure MO" is "tactile," a column of information goes on to tell the compliant, test-taking female reader who would probably otherwise be having sex, as far as I can tell from the magazine, that she has a particular "go-to style" and that there is a way to trigger a "bigger O," though why a large zero would be beneficial is a mystery to me. There's even a handy and colorful graphic depicting the ideal, or maybe only, sexual position, tastefully done in two-tone color-coded silhouette complete with a slim, pony-tailed girl and pec-bearing dude. I somehow doubt that the peak of the Bell Curve of Cosmo readers, who are mostly American, after all, would bear similar profiles.
My favourite article this month is "25 Ways To Go Naked . . . Without Freezing Your Butt Off." I wonder how many editorial meetings it took to get that ellipsis to stay in there. Yes, I like nakedness and I indeed dislike freezing, so this must be the place to gather some tips: let's see . . .. "Try These With Your Guy" - Number 6 tells the reader to use warming lube during sex. Okay, that seems like a no-brainer. Warmth. Lubrication. Works. Number 9 suggests a sleeping bag and summer movies: clever and romantic. But Number 12, involving turning up the heat in the car and having a romp, sounds downright deadly. Should we not be in a private place, lest a serial killer put me and my "man" at the top of the 11 O'Clock News? If we're in the garage, how long before the CO poisoning kicks in? No less deadly, and likely a favorite of members of the SS, is Number 8, "Bake a pie together in a hot 400 degree oven." You know what, I guess I'll keep my clothes on for now.
I dunno. Maybe Cosmo describes what women really want out of life - makeup and orgasms. It's a bit reductionist, but okay, everybody needs a hobby. What bothers me is the arc of induction into womanhood that Cosmo and magazines like it describe. Starting with Teen Magazine, then Seventeen and graduating to Cosmopolitan, it seems almost as if it's a movie plot where a subversive Manchurian Candidate / Stepford Wives evil empire of a government, or secret social Star Chamber prep our womyn for their future "place" in society and, with sufficient indoctrination, they will like it and long to be better at it.With a seventeen-year-old daughter myself, I worry about the focus that pop media is still trying to bring to the forefront of impressionable and later, jaded, minds. That of a focus on being able, willing and ready to breed and to be objectified and to finally be put to pasture as well-trained cougars since there is no media for the non-egg producing set, unless you include Family Circle, Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest.
Maybe it's a good thing that Cosmo and its ilk will pass into obscurity or, at least, not be all up in the face, to paraphrase the slang, dog. Perhaps the identities, sexual and otherwise, of our vaunted special boys and girls can develop on their own, without the pressure of guidebooks to what they should want and need, courtesy of some mega publisher. Perhaps, in the case of the individuality of people in general, perhaps there's no app for that.
I have here a 220 page issue of the March 2011 Cosmopolitan. You may be wondering why a guy has an issue of Cosmo open on his lap. Well, I read the articles, okay? What puzzles and frightens me is this concluding question: is this what women think about all day while guys are fantasizing about pimping their Volvos into monster trucks? If so, we're in more trouble than I thought.
Cosmopolitan Magazine, for those who have lived strictly in a monastery since birth, is a collection of advertising, sex and beauty tips and sex tips for the beautiful. It's also famous for its quizzes, where ladies can test any aspect of their existence, from the level of their ability to conquer the elusive orgasm to some other thing about orgasms. The March issue has a quiz on, you guessed it, sex. Here's an interesting question: "You're about to indulge in a steamy solo session, so you reach for . . .", followed by four brash choices, but I there's really no reason to go past letter A, "Your clitoris or breasts or both - no reason to wait." Exactly. Good enough for me. However, I'm not a woman, at least, I don't think I am, and the purpose of the test is to suss out what kind of sexual deviant you actually are. Enough A answers, and your "pleasure MO" is "tactile," a column of information goes on to tell the compliant, test-taking female reader who would probably otherwise be having sex, as far as I can tell from the magazine, that she has a particular "go-to style" and that there is a way to trigger a "bigger O," though why a large zero would be beneficial is a mystery to me. There's even a handy and colorful graphic depicting the ideal, or maybe only, sexual position, tastefully done in two-tone color-coded silhouette complete with a slim, pony-tailed girl and pec-bearing dude. I somehow doubt that the peak of the Bell Curve of Cosmo readers, who are mostly American, after all, would bear similar profiles.
My favourite article this month is "25 Ways To Go Naked . . . Without Freezing Your Butt Off." I wonder how many editorial meetings it took to get that ellipsis to stay in there. Yes, I like nakedness and I indeed dislike freezing, so this must be the place to gather some tips: let's see . . .. "Try These With Your Guy" - Number 6 tells the reader to use warming lube during sex. Okay, that seems like a no-brainer. Warmth. Lubrication. Works. Number 9 suggests a sleeping bag and summer movies: clever and romantic. But Number 12, involving turning up the heat in the car and having a romp, sounds downright deadly. Should we not be in a private place, lest a serial killer put me and my "man" at the top of the 11 O'Clock News? If we're in the garage, how long before the CO poisoning kicks in? No less deadly, and likely a favorite of members of the SS, is Number 8, "Bake a pie together in a hot 400 degree oven." You know what, I guess I'll keep my clothes on for now.
I dunno. Maybe Cosmo describes what women really want out of life - makeup and orgasms. It's a bit reductionist, but okay, everybody needs a hobby. What bothers me is the arc of induction into womanhood that Cosmo and magazines like it describe. Starting with Teen Magazine, then Seventeen and graduating to Cosmopolitan, it seems almost as if it's a movie plot where a subversive Manchurian Candidate / Stepford Wives evil empire of a government, or secret social Star Chamber prep our womyn for their future "place" in society and, with sufficient indoctrination, they will like it and long to be better at it.With a seventeen-year-old daughter myself, I worry about the focus that pop media is still trying to bring to the forefront of impressionable and later, jaded, minds. That of a focus on being able, willing and ready to breed and to be objectified and to finally be put to pasture as well-trained cougars since there is no media for the non-egg producing set, unless you include Family Circle, Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest.
Maybe it's a good thing that Cosmo and its ilk will pass into obscurity or, at least, not be all up in the face, to paraphrase the slang, dog. Perhaps the identities, sexual and otherwise, of our vaunted special boys and girls can develop on their own, without the pressure of guidebooks to what they should want and need, courtesy of some mega publisher. Perhaps, in the case of the individuality of people in general, perhaps there's no app for that.
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