A serious question about this video [see link below]... would you consider this being ethical for advertisers to use for certain products. Such as skin, makeup, etc. products like basically saying you'll look like this if you use this or this but in reality it is not true at all, making the advertisement untruthful about the product's results. I think its very much unethical on the part of the advertiser, not faulting the photographer or/and retoucher as they have a job to please the advertiser/client.
I just wanted to hear your thoughts and start a discussion about this trend which I hopefully think will change which it is very, very slowly towards wanting more realistic less photoshopping, etc.
I'm only asking here cause we're involved as the tools to the advertisers. Do we follow the market demand in order to being or becoming a successful advertising fashion photographer by delivering all demands to the client with a guide of your style of course, and creating your style based on that market demand for advertising fashion photography?
I have to say, I don't see anything wrong.
I understand the whole "real beauty" thing, and that we are all individual unique and precious snowflakes, but I have 2 reasons for thinking this is necessary.
1. On a very basic instinctual level we as humans are programmed to find certain features attractive. When you have a model in a beauty advertisement, the goal of her face in that picture is not to sell her individuality, but to have instant broad appeal by targeting and exploiting those instinctual features we look for. Look at any high end product advertising, and look at how extensive the retouching is there. In these cases, the models face is nothing but a product, and is held to the same standards of perfection.
2. When you take a picture, it is literally a moment frozen in time. Your eye has time to analyze a face in a way you usually don't in real life. When you are dealing with people in the real world, everything is fluid. We are constantly moving, lighting is changing, and faces go through a range of expression. All this means that when you are interacting with a "real" person, you don't focus on all their skin imperfections, the fact that their eyes are not the same size, that there may be a little birthmark somewhere, sun damage, unkempt hair, dirt, etc. When you take a picture of someone though, all of that is on display. Everyone has imperfections, and in that frozen moment, they become distractions which your eye will constantly focus on. Things you probably wouldnt notice if the person was just walking past you, or talking to you face to face. So we remove these "distractions" from a face because, if anything, it makes the image more realistic IMO. It is closer to how you would perceive the person in real life.
I mean something like skin cream as a product and we as the retoucher manipulates the skin from the photograph to look perfect or unrealistic form, is ethical? In my opinion its false advertising. Question is would photographers/retouchers care if its ethical or not, or even in some cases illegal which sometimes it would be in certain countries to state the image has been manipulated to a certain degree that the image the viewer is seeing is not real.