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As a photographer, sometimes I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you want your work to be taken seriously, if you want to book the magazine spreads and make the big bucks, well you have to play the game. You have to cast the right model, team up with the best hair and makeup people and when you’ve got your shoot and you’re alone in front of your computer screen, you load up Photoshop and that’s where the real magic starts to happen.

I’m sorry but if you don’t edit the subjects in your photos beyond any resemblance of what a real women might look like, well you get laughed out of the building or at least you don’t get hired again. Simply put, if you show up with a good, professional image of a pretty yet “regular” proportioned looking model who may have a few wrinkles and fat folds (even the skinniest of people have fat folds!), your work simply doesn’t reflect what the industry expects or your colleagues (the established “pros”) offer. Real women have skin blemishes and wrinkles, and fat folds, but a “real” professional photographer should know how to get rid of these imperfections for publications. Now being a person with a feminist ideals, who’s aware of the dangers or creating a society of such unrealistic ideas of beauty, I’m forever at odds with the liquidfy tool but when I’m sitting there alone in front of my screen, I know what will look good. I know that with a click of my mouse and a wrist movement, I can shave off 15lbs and shape a nice toosh that otherwise,  great genetics and 12 months in doing heavy squats couldn’t get you.

Well while I’m at odds with myself, does anyone out there struggle with these issue too? And as consumers, would you be turned off at the site of an “imperfect” women, come on be honest.