What Exactly is Photoshop?

Hello once again ladies and gents? So sorry for the long silence. I have been extra busy of late. Chasing that paper and all. Just because you don't see photos uploaded doesn't mean i have been snapping away. Some clients don't prefer having their photos online and I have to respect their wishes. Anyways here I am.

As I said, I have been extra busy. I have been talking to a lot of you. I have been bombarded with a myriad of questions concerning Spot-on Photoshop. People are asking, "How different is your kind of photography?". Well, wonder no more.

First thing first. Africans are kind of very slow creatures. When the white man introduced us to the Agrarian revolution, we resisted very strongly.  Now, we are dying of starvation. When he later came and introduced us to the industrial revolution, we still resisted. Now we buy all our machinery from abroad further hurting our pockets and sinking us into more poverty. Now, the white man once again has brought us a very powerful revolutionary tool called Adobe Photoshop and majority of the African population are calling it a hoax including these so-called "aspiring models". Yes. It is that bad. You would think they should be twice as enthusiastic as I am but noooooo!

Moving on swiftly, so what exactly is Photoshop? Photoshop, in the simplest terms, is an image editing program. Image editing ranges from simple manipulations such as cropping to more complex works like color correction, skin retouching to composition creations. It is a tool that your photographer should always use. Unfortunately its interface is very intimidating and since humans fear the unknown, most photographers bash it and call it all sorts of names. I, on the other hand, have been playing around with Photoshop and Corel Graphics Suite ever since I was in high school back in the year 2005 so to me, I literally know the ropes around these sophisticated programs.

Below is a simple illustration of what Photoshop can do for your photos:

How awesome is that? I think we should embrace this technology if we are to compete on the same level with the west and the rest of the world as a whole. Let's get out of our comfort zones. And if you are a model or want a portfolio done for you, please go for a photographer who will sell you. Flat photos are just plain boring. They may make you look cute and all but artistic pieces will open doors for you and that is what photo editing programs are all about. Don't believe me? That's too bad for you.

The Re-invention

Hello ladies and gents. For those who don't know me, I am Norbert Oigara, the founder of Spot-on Photoshop. When I started photography, not so long ago, I was doing it purely out of passion. I loved it. I loved it, partly because I had been using photoshop for a very long time but I didn't have a camera at that time. So I used to download images from the internet such as the one below and edit it.

Its when I got hold of my big brother's camera that I really took off(literally). I felt invincible. And I started photographing and photoshopping away. I mostly did my close friends first. And we did it as a hobby. I knew very little about photography. Actually, I knew nothing. and so long as I could photoshop, I thought things would only get better.

It has been close to 6 months now since then. I have grown wiser. I have learned that its always important to get it right in camera. There are some photos I over-edited and my friends didn't like them. They didn't have to tell me but I knew they hated them. I was making the classic mistake of putting up one bad photo after another thinking I had created master pieces. We are all human. We hold dearly to our creations and protect them jealously. Its human nature.

Over the last few months, I have come to appreciate that the photographer and the subject don't see eye to eye(pun intended). And that is where most photographers get it wrong. You can shoot a great composition according to your standards but when you present the work to a client, they go like "my nose looks big in this one". It is for this reason that I decided to re-invent myself. I am not yet there but one day I will. Overall though, I love my progress. I want to focus on portrait and to a small extent, product photography. Things like jewelery, clothing, shoes, the works. That is where my niche is. Have you seen my latest work on the former? Check it out on www.facebook.com/spotonphotoshop .

In conclusion, this is one journey am really looking forward to. Making people look awesome :). Coz its your right to look good in a photo. You paid for it after all didn't you?