Here's a little insight into part of our work for those of you interested in how we get our photos from the camera to our porn site members and blogs:

Every time I post a tweet letting members/voyeurs know they're watching me at the computer "editing pics", I wonder if people are thinking, "what does that entail, anyway?" So here's the process (Delia does hers a little differently than I do, so I'm just saying what I do):

1) We transfer the image files from our camera to a computer where we store all of our full size, unedited image files. We use a usb cable rather than removing the card every time and using a card reader, which seems to be the more popular way that most people do it. Not us, though. I've always used the cable because a) it came with our cameras, but card readers did not, and b) I prefer to avoid handling our memory cards that often; I think it's better not to touch them and expose them to dust, etc. so the only time we remove our memory cards is if we're shooting away from home, fill up a card, and need to put in a new card to take pictures. Estimated time: 5-30 minutes depending on how many pics we took (usually 75-200 per set, and we often shoot multiple sets on one card); it definitely takes longer with our new camera since each pic is 4288x2848 pixels and around five to nine megabytes.

2) At this point we often take a look through the pictures to assess how we did and talk about why the look good or don't. You'll see us doing this with our heads tilting back and forth since pics we took as portraits are laying on their sides in landscape. Estimated time: varies between 2 and 30 minutes

3) We make COPIES of the original files and put them on our working machines. Estimated time: virtually none as long as we aren't having annoying network problems

4) I go through the photos and delete duplicates, ugly pics, pics with bad lighting, etc. Because our sites are homemade with an amateur appeal, I leave in a lot of "bad" pics because even the blurry ones and ones I think are unflattering usually have some redeeming quality (ex. my face looks bad, but my butt looks great, or the light is not technically excellent and the picture's not print-ready, but it still evokes a mood and helps tie the images together so there's some movement from one image to the next). Sometimes I do leave in poses that are nearly identical; the standards for porn sites are very different from artistic photography sites because we aren't trying to exhibit our very best PHOTOGRAPHY, we're trying to give people pictures to arouse them AND meet the quantity expectations porn review sites look for.

Very subtle differences in two like photos can make one jack-worthy to one person while the other is not. Let's say there's an image where I have an enticing expression on my face, but my feet are cut out of the frame. Then there's another nearly identical picture where I my double chin is highlighted, but my feet are all there and looking great. One guy who loves feet will be happy I included the ugly-face, feet-included pic, while another who doesn't care about feet will only be interested in my come-hither look in the other photo. That's why I leave in a lot of less-than-perfect and repetitious images. Still, I sometimes take a lot of time deciding whether or not to keep or toss pictures. Estimated time: 5-20 minutes

5) I open three photos at a time in Photoshop. I use a hotkey I've set up to rotate the image (if necessary) and another hotkey to resize the photo to my specifications. I look at each image more closely than before, adjusting levels to brighten them up if necessary, add more contrast, and adjust the color balance as needed; because we don't use a flash or tons of lights and we often rely on natural light or a combination, there's often a lot of variation in our photos even when we've taken all of them in one location. We might move in and out of different colors and levels of light so it does NOT work to apply a process on a whole batch of photos, I have to look at and edit each image individually.

I also use the bandaid tool to cover up zits or ingrown hairs sometimes. Sometimes I crop and size pictures more creatively if I need more close-ups or really need to get rid of some distraction in the picture to salvage something good about it. Very rarely I will apply filters (soft blur, etc.) to images or just fuck around seeing what those look like without committing to them. We *do not* change color photos into black and white using Photoshop, Well, hardly ever. Almost all of the black and white pictures on our sites were SHOT in black and white.

6) I save each picture WITHOUT optimizing them (making the file size smaller for web suitability) because I want to keep a copies of high quality edited versions of each photo since one picture might be used in a number of places in a number of ways. Sometimes I save duplicates of images I especially like in a "promo" folder at a different size with a border added that I use for posting in our blogs. I have a promo folder inside each edited gallery folder. Estimated time for steps five and six: 30-120 minutes

7) I go through the pictures again to see if there are more I want to delete.

8) Sometimes I rename files so that they will be presented in an order that makes better sense (move pictures we took in the middle to the beginning, etc.). Estimated time for steps seven and eight: 0-10 minutes

After all of that, I build the gallery which is another process entirely.

ESTIMATED TOTAL TIME SPENT ON THIS PROCESS FOR EACH GALLERY: 45 minutes to three and a half hours

I enjoy this process quite a bit (especially if I look halfway decent in the pictures) and appreciate taking the time to really SEE what were making. It's pleasurable, meditative, hot and it makes me feel productive. I also think it's important we do this work (and do it ourselves) because it teaches us what does and doesn't work with posing, lighting, camera settings, framing, etc.

Want to know more behind-the-scenes info regarding our pics? Check out this entry on how much one shoot cost: ARE OUR SHOOTS WORTH IT?

Labels: advide to porn hopefuls, beauty standards, fetishes, mundane, photography, PORNOGRAPHY, sex work, webwhore insights

posted by Trixie at 8/22/2008 11:03:00 AM -