School Yearbook Touch-Up Squad
Airbrushing Acne, Sure, But Digitally Losing 10 Pounds?
By JOANN KLIMKIEWICZ | Courant Staff Writer
March 4, 2008
We all know by now the photo retouching wonders that render the most famous of faces poreless and perfect, often at the expense of reality, as when GQ magazine infamously manipulated its cover image of curvaceous actress Kate Winslet several years ago to pin-thin proportions.
But it turns out those angelic little rites of high school passage — the posed and polished yearbook photo — are often sent through their own rigors of digital enhancement.
"Oh, can you imagine? Nobody wants to look at a picture if they have acne. Especially nowadays. Kids are so into looks, you know?" says Christine Falana, yearbook club adviser at Wethersfield High School. "They see all these covers of magazines and that's what they want to look like. That's what they're used to."
Airbrushing of class photos is, of course, nothing new. Photo studios have for decades retouched the scarred visages of teenagers, first working on the negatives and then painting over the actual photographs to render lips more pink and complexions more porcelain. The result has been a cap-and-gown smile they can more easily stomach when they pull out the old high school yearbook in adulthood.
But in this age of digital imaging, what has changed is the extent to which those pictures can be nipped and prettied. Now, basic touch-ups of teenage zits, undereye circles and blotchy skin is de rigueur for portrait studios, which typically include the service in the general pricing of their class photo packages. For an extra charge, students these days can request braces, moles and scars wiped clean from their photos, unruly hair toned down, the color of their clothing tweaked, even a few pounds digitally shaved off.
"We're getting a lot of requests to fix things. And with digital, we can do a lot better job than in the past," says Art Rich, a studio photographer for 36 years who works about 30 high school accounts, with about 10 elementary and middle schools, in the state. "Clothing, hair and braces. Sometimes they come in with a sunburn, and that can be fixed. Some kids have facial piercings and their parents don't want them in the photo.
"We've seen many arguments in the studio where the son wants to [keep the piercing in] and the mother doesn't."
The solution? Let him take the class picture with the nose ring, and get a few airbrushed copies, sans facial jewelry, for Mom.
"It does get extra, though," says Rich, who has studios in Berlin, Watertown and Southington. A basic in-studio session can cost $20 to $125, before purchasing photos. Digital retouching can cost as little as $10 and as much as $70 — depending on the extent and difficulty of the work.
"Girls are fussy. If there's little frizzes and stuff, they want that fixed," says Rich, who employs four full-time retouchers. He estimates 50 percent of his students request some extra touch-up for their class photos.
"Everybody wants to look their best," says Rich.
But at the expense of looking like themselves? Doesn't it send kids a message that any flaw, any perceived imperfection, can and should be fixed at the push of a button?
"That's the slippery slope with modern senior photography," says Michael Chunyk, marketing director of Grynn & Barrett, a photo agency based in Holyoke, Mass., with school accounts in Connecticut and a studio in Rocky Hill.
He says some agencies employ a heavy hand digitally retouching. He has seen some studio catalogs advertise before and after photographs of client pictures that have been thinned down. As great as today's digital advancements have proved, one of the byproducts, he says, is that it has caused many class-portrait photographers to spend less time setting up the most flattering shot, and more time figuring out how they'll use Photoshop to fix flaws.
The studio gets requests to airbrush freckles, thin out features, even change the head of one pose onto another.
"As a rule, we don't do that," he says. "We feel that you are who you are when you come here. There are some things you can change like a pimple, but we're not going to start changing your body type. Our whole motto is just be yourself."
Their basic rule of thumb, with some exceptions, he says, "if it's something you're born with, we tend not to touch it."
Photo studios like Rich's and Grynn & Barrett are playing more with special effects and unique setups. Today's senior portraits play up patterns and lighting in the backgrounds, pose students to look more like wind-swept models and set up shots that convey their hobbies — from cheerleader, to sports cars to horseback riding.
"We have to keep current ... and do things that customers can't [with their own digital cameras at home], says Chunyk, who estimates senior portrait packages can range from $180 to $800.
"We're giving them something edgy and cool, and making it seem like something you'd see out of a magazine instead of something you'd see out of Sears or Wal-Mart."
But doesn't even removing a splotch or a set of braces betray reality?
Rich doesn't think so.
"Those braces are coming off, and hopefully, those blemishes are clearing up. So that's not going to be who you are a few years from now, anyway," says Rich.
It only gets worrisome when parents or teens get overzealous in their requests, he says, asking for changes that deny a child's actual appearance, and that tell them unsubtly that theirs is a body that needs fixing.
"Sometimes you get a parent who really puts down their child. They're in the camera room, criticizing the kid's smile or saying something about their big nose," says Rich. "Now, that's seldom. But I've seen it."
If done right, Rich says, retouching can serve to boost a child's self-esteem. Not crush it.
Carly Mearman, a senior at Wethersfield, had her class portraits done at Rich's studio last summer. She had the basic retouching that comes with any package, but did choose a more elaborate in-studio session. She posed in three outfits and a host of backgrounds.
"I remember I wanted to do it all over again," she says. "You definitely feel like a model."
Mearman can understand why some students choose extra retouching, as did her older sister, now in college, who had a dark facial beauty mark airbrushed. It was subtle retouching that left her sister with pictures she was really happy about, without sacrificing who she really is and how she really looks.
"It's a picture you'll have forever in your yearbook or hanging up in your house. And down the road, you want to be remembered as perfect as possible," she says.
"But you shouldn't go as far as changing how you look. You shouldn't go to that extreme. It just looks fake. You should just be who you are."
Contact Joann Klimkiewicz at jklimkiewicz@courant.com.
Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant
