There are many schools, they are all valid.
The retouching team I've contracted with I've worked with for years. They also did Gregory's retouching up until recently.
As far as his approach, I know little of it other than second hand information, so no use to repeat.
As far as retouching, well, it's opened up a different thought process. A lot of people, clients and photographers believe you can do anything in post and in a way you can, but it's somewhat like those CG still lifes I see where the CG artist says, "looks like a photograph . . . eh?" I always think well, yea, kinda, but to me CG really looks like a badly over retouched photograph.
In fact I think all the over retouching we are asked to do takes away from the value of the photograph, as well as the photographer. To me the only reason to photograph a scene is to give some recognition to reality, regardless of how manufactured or absurd that reality might be. Once we push every pixel, it becomes a drawing and drawings are usually a lot cheaper to do than a photograph, though the flip side of this is I've met few photographers that don't draw on their photographs, the other flip side to this is the consumer never really believes a drawing is real.
Obviously you can do anything in post production, but it usually looks silly. You can make Francis Ford Coppola look like Matt Damon, but it doesn't work or look right, so it's a lot better to make Mr. Coppola look like Mr. Coppola.
A few years ago I shot a gig out on the disney ranch in LA. It was the most "challenged" shoot I've done, for a lot of reasons, mostly because selection of talent. I know it was the best photograph I've ever shot though to me it never looked right.
I was very proud I could take this collection of stuff I had and make it look like it was shot in Southern Italy, but . . . it still didn't look right.
I sent it to retouchers, worked on it myself, kept it on my computer desktop for nearly a year, trying to "fix" this one scene and I finally realized it wasn't the retouching, it was just the fact the model was (and I'm putting this kindly) not right for this one scene. (Actually the other sessions were fine because she was good for those).
So the point, if I have one, is what's in front of the lens is probably more important than what we do after the shoot.
Maybe someday it will be an all cad cam, cg world, but I can promise you a lot of inspiration will be lost, because that type of work usually get's manipulated by committee, which isn't a bad thing in itself, it just never has one single artist driving the project and it looks like it.
Nothing wrong with committees, nothing wrong with retouching as long as what comes out of all of those meetings is transfered to visuals with a real plan, rather than a mindset of let's fix it later.
With the pressures of the economy and production, lately we hear that a lot . . . don't worry, you/we can fix it later and sometimes uh yea, you can, but usually it looks fixed.
This image has clean up. Obviously there are just some things you have to clean up, but the main elements were there, the lighting was meant to be soft, the fabric in front of the talent was placed and blown around to give that effect, the depth of field was used for purpose.
Now I could have just shot in on white, shot the fabric later, even done the makeup later, but it would have lost a lot in translation and manipulation if it was manufactured on the back end. IMO.
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JR
