For Customers

Prompt For Business Portraits

You don’t have to look too closely to notice that there’s something wrong with these business portraits.

Artificial intelligence image generators are so much fun. The above images were created using a simple text prompt of “business portrait of company CEO.” Every time the prompt was run, the Stable Diffusion image generator kept creating very similar looking images of white males.
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Photo Retouching Makes You Look Good

A vinyl banner on the side of a van belonging to a company that makes and installs glass shower enclosures. The centre shower has blue masking tape left over from the installation. The shower on the right has reflections of a nearby window. All three photos are crooked and distorted.

Today I saw a big, shiny van belonging to a company that makes and installs glass showers. The sides of the van had large photos of glass-enclosed showers. But apparently no one bothered to look at the pictures before they were printed on vinyl and attached to the sides of the vehicle.
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Retouching Business Headshots

Prison mugshots from Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, 1913. (Library and Archives Canada)

I’ve retouched a lot of business portraits, a few actor headshots and even some family portraits. Common retouching requests include removing stray hairs, brightening eyes and teeth, minimizing facial wrinkles, eliminating double chins, fixing skin issues, and repairing clothing malfunctions.
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Artificially Intelligent Mayor

A photo from the published campaign platform of Toronto mayoral candidate Anthony Furey. Do you notice anything wrong? If you do, then maybe you should run for mayor. I see at least six things wrong, ten if you want to get picky (see the comment section below).

But maybe nothing is wrong with the photo. Maybe Furey is saying that having a third arm will make you more prosperous. Vote for him and get another arm!

Note: The link to the original version of the campaign platform no longer works because https://www.warrentoda.com/toronto-photographer/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wpseo_dashboardit has been updated. Care to guess why it was updated?

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Retouching Business Headshot Selfies

Before cellphone cameras, if you wanted a selfie, you had to use a real camera. This picture is from 1991 when bungee jumping without a second safety harness was thought to be safe. The camera was duct-taped to my hand so I couldn’t drop it.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

Is it common for a company to require its employees to supply their own business headshots? Most of these self-supplied headshots are, of course, cellphone selfies.
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On Photography – 50 Years Later

If you don’t like what you see in front of your camera, you can often wait a few minutes and a better picture might come along. These two skyline pictures were shot less than 20 minutes apart. In those few minutes, the wind blew in the clouds and the automatic lights in many buildings turned on.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

It’s the 50th anniversary of the publication of US author Susan Sontag‘s essay Photography (link to PDF) which was later re-edited and renamed “In Plato’s Cave.” This renamed essay became the first of six essays in her book, “On Photography.” In Plato’s Cave is probably the most well known of the six essays.
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