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The Future Of Glamour Images Photographers Be Alarmed!
Should I be afraid? I am a beauty artist. I depict people, actual persons. My art is carried out by means of digital technology. Am I likely to fail to keep up with the progress?
It would be absolutely fantastic to foresee the prospects of the rapid development that glamour photographs now experience. Then I would definitely inform you about it, my dear reader, in my blog about glamour images. There is a possibility that we glamour artists will no longer play our part in this miraculous world of visual art. Nowadays most of the photographer's hard work can be done via Photoshop in less time and with lesser effort. Even though we still own the most responsible part, which is the taking of a picture. Nevertheless we might soon face the bitter fact that some rendering programs can do it as well.
If we want to get the whole picture though, we really need to reminisce about the past and carefully study the present.
In the distant past glamour images were painted with oil onto canvas. The full range from simple, innocent face portraits up to full body nude portraits was popular and was painted for example by famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Then, in the mid-19th century, cameras came into being. These were big bulky dry-plate cameras for studio use, which required quite long shutter times. Portraits became popular fast, but the subjects had to sit or stand completely still for quite a long time. It was customary to utilize head-clamps, so the subjects could hold their head still. Quite obviously, the sight of a person with a clamped head had little to do with glamour.
With the development of visual arts and the technical progress it all became simpler. The emergence of film made beauty photography a lot easier and more affordable. Magazines started publishing such photos. David Mecey, the famous Playboy photographer, once said that in the recent past they had to use large format cameras for shooting pictures for centerfolds - all for the sake of quality. This meant that they had to use a ton of light and a lot of times they blew the fuses of the location on which they were shooting when they started to use their strobes.
Currently glamour photos are pretty much always taken with digital cameras. Those of small and medium-sized format. Due to the increasedquality and resolution almost any digital camera can produce a photo to fit on a magazine's centerfold.
Now future of Glamorous Photography will be quite interesting. Shall we witness the dawn of 3D technology? Should it be so, then it's already there. My favorite German magazine on Photoshop now features more and more articles about 3D rendering programs. There is an increasing number of generated 3D images on the Web. I've got friends out there who have their own virtual identities and post Flickr photo streams filled with rendered images. Their very own gallery of virtual three-dimensional glamour! Surfing online, it seems like the most common use of 3D rendering software like poser these days is the generation of elves, the beautiful exotic female characters in mystical stories. Such rendered pictures possess many attributes of traditional glamour photos.
It's possible that we glamour photographers will become living anachronisms. Keep that in mind, fellow artists, but don't despair! Personally, I trust in what I do. Just as painting and film have survived, there will always be a huge demand for digital glamour images, made with a DSLR, inspiration, fine lighting and much love.
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