People hate themselves. They spit on their own images. They want wrinkles removed, scars covered over, teeth whitened, fat lost, dark circles lightened. All the things that life has done to them, and they want me to fix it.

I do understand. A portrait, even an informal one, is an Occasion. It has much to do with how we view ourselves – even though photographs are also lies.

At any rate, I have spent hours on amending portraits of people – some are dear friends, some are one-day clients.

But this weird thing happens.

In order to do most retouching, you magnify the photo so that every pixel is distinguishable. Stroke, brush, daub, and smoothe.

Inevitably, I have the sensation that I am actually touching that person’s skin or eyes. I am careful, yes. But I feel so much, too. Compassion of the most intimate kind.

It is very much like making love. That kind of close, slow, soothing touch. As though I could really take away all the life-hours that brought on those wrinkles and scars and fat.

It’s not so different from Reiki – the hands-on healing technique that I practice. When I do Reiki on someone who has pain, I literally feel their pain.

It isn’t that I am IN pain. I simply touch it, the way that one touches cold water and gets the sensation without turning to ice.

Digital photography and all its accompanying software is often described as cold and distancing. It can be. But this strange business of retouching has become warmer than anything I ever did with film.

So awhile back, faking tilt-shift photography was all the rage on flickr and similar places. The idea is to make a normal landscape photo look like it’s a miniature via Photoshop gradient mask and lens blur. Like this:

It’s clever and cutesy cool and many people have spent hours playing with the effect.

[MORE EXAMPLES from Bryson City on my photoblog.]

Yes, even me.

Maybe it’s the desire to play God, make everything seem small but strikingly clear.

Or maybe it’s a nice way to make up for the fact that you can’t afford a tilt-shift lens.

Or that you didn’t position yourself strategically to get the effect you wanted.

Or… that you had too much light to limit the depth of field.

Or, didn’t know how to use the equipment you have to create a very narrow strip that’s in focus.

[Straight out of the camera. Shot with a Canon Powershot S3, supermacro, 1/50th at f5]

[Straight out of the camera. Shot with a Pentax K10D, 50mm lens reverse-mounted, at f1.7]