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No work this weekend...just spending time with my sweet son! Happy Mother's Day!

My client shoots beautifully. Always beautiful lighting, makeup/hair and models. I love retouching beauty images. Sometimes it's an even bigger challenge to retouch an image that is already so beautiful. It's all about subtle and natural retouching that will make it pop and give it that oomph it needs!

My client wanted retouching, with flawless makeup and skin, yet keep the image as natural as can be, with a popping effect. Well, the model was gorgeous, the makeup was awesome and the photography was great, with all that said, no image is perfect and almost every image needs retouching. When looking at the retouched image, you look at the model's features and makeup, which was the intent all along. Beautiful!

This was a fun project, not to mention, right up my alley. I love, let me repeat, love retouching naturally. My client had a large order for me to retouch for a client of theirs. We both agreed natural retouching was the way to go. It actually is more challenging and more skills are involved when retouching in a natural way. What to eliminate, what to decrease or modify, what not to do so the image doesn't loose it's raw fresh feeling. It was fun to work on these images. My client is talented and so easy to work for and I get to retouch naturally, what more can I ask for?

My client wanted a naturally retouched final image. For this series, it was crucial to stay natural, not to take away from the authenticity of the images. As a retouch artist, I do prefer natural retouching. I really like to keep the image approachable, real; to show the true rawness. With that said, this project needed even more of a raw feeling. I needed to make sure I kept the image all about the intent, the photographer, the model, the makeup artist and less about the photo retoucher.

My client had a fun challenging image for me to retouch. It was in the middle of a crazy storm, the model came with dry skin from the dry/cold weather, the makeup artist did not show up due to being snowed in, and they had one day to shoot, so he was in a bit of a pickle. I just love images that have so much potential...with the right retouching, coloring and minor adjustments...it came out beautiful!

My client sent me a beautiful image that needed just enough retouching to make this image pop. The lighting, model, makeup, styling was all great. 40 minutes later, the image pops and made the cover of Senior Mode's Feb issue!

This was a fun project. Originally I was requested to do something with this image. My client really didn't need it, she has enough pretty color head shots, but when she said, do anything you want, I trust you or drop this image, that's when a light bulb turned on, appropriate since my last name is Watt...Holla...anyway I digress. So I really wanted this image to pop. Then BAM, it hit me. This should be B&W and needs to feel exotic, retro, sexy, and mysterious. So with some fine tune retouching, color conversion, cool crop and imagination, I feel this has the IT factor. It's like Ralph Lauren...

Natural retouching is normally essential when retouching males, whether commercial, beauty or fashion. My client needed their client retouched naturally for their promotional/press images. I added a little pop to the image, while keeping it natural, real and approachable.

This was a challenging, but fun assignment. I was giving images to pick from to retouch and create a beauty story. So, finding two strong images that complement each other is first and foremost. That's what creates the story making process. Then to take already gorgeous pictures and retouch them to make them even more gorgeous, well, dang, that's just not fair, but it makes me think outside the box, plus that's when cropping helps bring out some creativity. The wig and red lips has been done time and time again, so I thought creating in season trendy colors would be more beneficial and cropping...