Provia400x with Elena (Patreon)

Let's start this with a rare sighting of Fuji Provia 400x using the Pentax67ii with Elena.

This is slide film, very saturated and sharp slide film. Here are a few more photos shot on Provia 400x:

These were taken on a Bronica ETR, I only used this film a few times.

I guess it's a nice stock for vibrant landscapes, good luck finding more of this film though.

Moving on to our photos at hand, when I initially saw these photos of Elena, I remember not liking them very much, I found the skin tones very brutal and the grain very harsh from what I was used to see. Because of that, I removed some noise & grain from the photos and smoothed them out, resulting in almost blurred out skin details. The photos you see in the gallery above are new edits from the original scans, not much have been edited though, I just played with the saturation a little, made the skin colour a little more pleasing and the bed sheet less blue. Thanks god I kept the original tif scans. 

I made before and afters, let's compare:

On the left my original edit, on top of the noise reduction, somehow I cleaned out her skin of details and freckles. Not dictating what you should or should not do, but I'm ashamed of what I did here, what was I thinking, her skin and freckles are gorgeous, why I removed  everything is beyond me, I don't quite remember though, that was 7 years ago. These days I only do minimal retouching, only little touches that make traits more appealing like harsh shadows and other stuff, things that are sort of my fault, but not changing shapes or smoothing out skin. Of course it's alright to remove zits or temporary stuff like heavy bags under the eyes from the all night partying the model did even though she had a shoot the morning after at 10am ;)

I tried to blow this up so you guys can see something here:

It's true that the noise is very sharp though I have to admit, it's not very pleasing, probably why I never shot this stock again. I somewhat understand why I edited like I did, it's created a more pleasing and more editorial look. 

If you look closely, even shapes were tampered with a little, it's nothing crazy excessive but it still can send out a poor message causing low self-esteem and body issues. Not something I'm doing anymore anyway. Again, not dictating how you should edit or not, just sharing my state of mind and experience. 

I remember at that time I was feeling the pressure to please the models with my photos, I wanted to give them the best photos of them ever, wanted them to feel gorgeous in every way and not feel ugly with any bad photos. One of the reasons why I was retouching I guess. Also times are changing, it was the cool thing to do back then, who was the best at retouching, maybe why that whole fake look became a thing, and now we have filters that does that all automatically, lots of things are said about those filters, however I see them used every day, but that is a subject we won't tackle today. With experience, I can say that it's very hard to please models, lots of times they will not like the same photo you do and that's understandable, it's not a portrait of you on there, she won't feel gorgeous in every shot. Even I don't like to see photos of myself, even more now as I'm getting older, it's hard to accept the facts that you won't be looking young and beautiful for eternity. 

Sometimes the photos they choose to share is mind boggling to me, also very often on most model's pages you will only see selfies instead of pro work. One time I even asked a model why they would only post selfies when they have so many good photos of them by different photogs and she responded: "because I get more likes from a selfie"  Or maybe because she just doesn't like any of the 250 photos you just gave her, but that she won't tell you. 

Back then, this following shot was put in the folder "do not use" by me:

I decided to hide this photo for a few reasons; was not the best angle, didn't make her look her best (she would probably have said she looked fat here) and the composition is not very interesting, but here it is anyway. Also, notice that I left her scar there, probably from the appendix removal surgery. I removed that scar on every photo it was visible, I don't quite remember but there is a change she asked me to remove it, if she didn't I'm even dumber for doing it, I think scars are a part of us, a part of our own experience. 

Also these two photos were placed inside that same folder, at the time never to be seen by anyone:

Anyway enough talking here, I hope this will be appreciated by a few a you, it takes me a long time to write blogs like this, know that you will only find this sort of content on Patreon, it's exclusive stuff, I won't be writing something like this on Instagram any time soon. 

Thanks for reading !