Zombie Fashion

[Mark Antony]

I saw the recent (March) cover of Cosmopolitan UK, pretty shocked by how poor the cover-shot was. plastic, smooth sharpened with a very high radius setting in un-sharp mask very different from airbrushing or pastel chalks and spray fix of 20 years ago.
I found an online picture of Miss Beyoncé March Plastic:
http://www.beyoncefan.com/2009/02/11/beyonce-cover-cosmo-uk-march-2009/
When are people going to get tired of this %$**?
Mark

 

[wayne naughton]

Agreed. There's nothing new as far as the end result is concerned, but I think the point is that the versatility of Photoshop retouching lowers the need for expertise on the part of the photographer. Photoshop retouching is much cheaper than airbrushing etc. and it can do things to an image that just weren't possible, (at least not at an affordable cost) in the past. There's no such thing as a "re-shoot" these days.

Bob H

.....You're dead right there, Bob me boy, but i don't think you can blame digitization for the decline of picture standards (which i think are absolutely abysmal these days) Every six months or so i buy an armful of magazines friom the newsagent ranging from high fashion and lifestyle down to the lowest paparazzi/celeb crud and the pictures are just awful, not even competent half the time. No wonder they're all going broke.....shrug.

wayne

 

[Ed Sukach]

I saw the recent (March) cover of Cosmopolitan UK, pretty shocked by how poor the cover-shot was. plastic, smooth sharpened...

I can't help but agree. That plastic-ization is most evident in Playboy ... where, at some time, they no longer featured nudes ... these girls are not nude, thanks to the generous application of body make-up. ... pounds and pounds --- or Kgs of it. The standing joke was that their forefronts were so large that balance was hopeless and they kept falling over - it became that they had trouble keeping them stable, in one place in the studio - they had so much body make-up that the were sliding all over the place!
We no longer see bare skin ... somewhere beneath all that there is a girl ...

When are people going to get tired of this %$**?
Mark

I think they already have. Playboy, after all is said and done, was VERY successful in its original form - "meteoric" was an adjective widely applied to the tracking of their rise. Now it is really - and decisively - a collection of artificial images, much like Cosmo or Elle.

This insane quest for perfection has its terrible price - one only has to consider Joan Rivers or Michael Jackson's net plastic surgery results.

Articifiality is in itself, ugly.

 

[BetterSense]

I don't understand why people don't embrace completely drawn or animated models, if artificial is what they want. It seems like Hollywood and the fashion scene will do everything to enhance and dehumanize/abstract their models/actors, yet if you draw or animate actors/models then that's like a breach of genre. As a fan of animation I lament that America considers animation for children, even while we have movies that are 100% green-screened--other than the actors, who are themselves often partially animated (Two face from The Dark Night, Dr. Manhatten from Watchmen).

This is reminds me of digitographers whose work revolves not around the camera, but around sitting at the computer compositing images and changing color curves and HDRing and I wonder if they ever considered taking up painting.

 

[archphoto]

The natural look has gone, toss out your Imagons and 150SF's, you don't need them anymore !
A wrinkle here and there: just polish it any..............

The other day, a client: "Could you photoshop out those cars, overhead powerlines and poles, and oh, I don't like that shadow either....."
"For free, please, 'cause I am not going to pay for photoshop"

A reshoot on a sunday takes less time.

What has this world become ?????

Peter

 

[BobNewYork]

The natural look has gone, toss out your Imagons and 150SF's, you don't need them anymore !
A wrinkle here and there: just polish it any..............

The other day, a client: "Could you photoshop out those cars, overhead powerlines and poles, and oh, I don't like that shadow either....."
"For free, please, 'cause I am not going to pay for photoshop"

A reshoot on a sunday takes less time.

What has this world become ?????

Peter

Yeah - don't you just love that! "What do you mean there's a charge for post production? Why?" Try asking them to do the shoot on a Sunday 'cos it's more convenient for you!! They seem to think that using Photoshop is just pushing a button and it just guesses what you want. Recently a client had specifically asked for a partially open window in a shoot. A week later he wanted me to close the window in Photoshop! Seemed to think it would take no more time than actually closing the window itself!!

Wrong forum I know - but needed to vent

Bob H

 

[GraemeMitchell]

There's tons of really amazing fashion work being done out there. If you don't like the fare you're getting in the mags your reading then switch it up. Cosmo and Playboy, riiiiight. Why not try something like Numero, or S.