Is Photoshop really a girl’s best friend?
In this day and age we have so much technology available that it is easy to alter our image. I speak to female entrepreneurs and business women on a daily basis regarding their headshots and their brand image. They will look through my portfolio and every reaction is the same: ‘Wow she looks gorgeous – can you airbrush me like that’. But is Photoshop really good for us?
With an environment in which we constantly chase perfection and strive to be the best (especially in business), it is no wonder that we want our image and brand to look perfect too. But can perfect be too good to be true?
Even though so many talented photographers can go to great lengths, is it realistic? With skin looking like a porcelain doll, images looking so altered they don’t look real do we know what real pictures look like anymore?
The magazines that have a demographic of young girls are being criticised for how much they portray images that are so highly edited that they aren’t realistic. With one of the notorious images being the ‘Kate Moss and daughter’. The media got slammed for editing it so much that two of her daughters fingers had disappeared.
There is huge criticism for how images no longer look real and that young girls aspire to this fake image. With celebrities being chastised in daily papers is it any wonder we have so many issues in social society? With the media branding healthy girls at a size 12 as ‘fat’ and girls that have natural size 8 frames as ‘anorexic’.
The same process applies with headshots. Don’t ask your photographer to airbrush you so much that it doesn’t look like you. Remember that you are portraying your brand and that you don’t want to change your image so much that when your customers / colleagues meet you, they don’t recognise you. As proven in The Dove Sketch, everybody has their self criticism but this isn’t how others see us. So just ask for a few small touch ups and be happy with who you are.
