School photographer causes outrage after offering retouching services for eight-year-olds
Oct 31, 2019
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Retouching portraits isn’t at all uncommon, and most photographers include it in their services. But if we talk about portraits of children, this becomes a rather sensitive topic. Journalist Sam Walker recently expressed her outrage with a school photographer who offered “basic and premium retouching” for annual school photos of eight-year-olds. The packages included blemish removal, teeth whitening, and evening skin tones.
Sam is the mother of two daughters. She tweeted on Monday that her girls had their school photo, and there was the option to airbrush the picture. “There are two levels offered!! What the….?!” She wrote angrily. The journalist added that she has complained, wondering “what 8 year old needs to be paranoid about an ‘uneven skin tone.’”
The girls have their school photo today and there is the option to AIRBRUSH the picture! There are two levels offered!! What the….?! Have complained! What 8 yr old needs to be paranoid about an “uneven skin tone” pic.twitter.com/6BGCx3FRZ9
— Sam Walker (@WalkerSam) October 28, 2019
In an interview with Metro, Sam said that her youngest daughter has a rare auto-immune condition that causes lesions on her skin and makes her teeth go yellow. In this situation, her fear is that this airbrushing question could diminish all the work she and her husband put into boosting their daughter’s confidence.
“The thought of her feeling that she should airbrush those blemishes out because she should look like everyone else… When you have a child who has some issues and so to suggest we can wipe that away you can look like everyone else is incredibly dangerous and very sad.”
Sam’s tweet has caused a lot of reactions from parents. They are mainly negative and turned towards the photographer who offers to retouch photos of young school children. Some of them, however, noted that you can simply choose not to include the retouching, and the photographer won’t do it. And yet, some parents thought that this would be a good idea for their kids.
The photographer also responded to Sam’s tweet, explaining that those services are mainly aimed at middle and high school kids. I suppose it’s just a standard form, and the photographer noted that “barely ever do parents order retouching for elem[entary school] kids.”
“The photogs and the company aren’t trying to shop the hell out of your kids, it’s for the kids with bad acne whose parents won’t order a package if the acne isn’t retouched. Plus we don’t want the middle/high school kids to feel bad about their pictures in the yearbook. There’s a lot of pressure on us to get good pics, please don’t take out your frustration on us.”
Photoshopping people can be a tricky topic, especially if we’re talking about children. And I think that we shouldn’t “photoshop the hell out” of either young kids or teenagers. Instead, we should teach them to love themselves with all their “imperfections” and “flaws.” But that’s a very broad topic to discuss.
All in all, I wouldn’t blame the photographer here. I think this is just a standard form and parents can simply choose not to include the retouching services if they don’t want them. At least they get to choose so there are no unpleasant surprises. I think a much bigger problem lies in parents who do choose to retouch cute little faces of their elementary school kids. But again, that’s a very broad and very tricky topic.
What do you think? Would you blame the photographer and/or the school here? Or you’d simply leave out the “retouching” part when ordering your kids’ photos, without any fuss? I’d go with the second solution, but I’m not a parent, so I’m just guessing. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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33 responses to “School photographer causes outrage after offering retouching services for eight-year-olds”
I don’t understand why people are so upset here, I’m sure she does all grades, and just uses the same ad for all grades, I’m sure the high schoolers are very happy with this service.
Galonii August i agree it’s an additional service. They could just say no and that would be the end of it.
Robby Karam yes and the retouching is blemishes and stuff, not full 9yards make me skinny with big boobs
Most kids are probably totally capable of doing that themselves with an app on their phone anyway!
Alexandre Ayoubi exactly that’s why I don’t see a big deal here. You know on the passport photos in my studio i use this quick software called portrait plus and I usually use it on the lowest cleanse 1 and customers seems to like it and not see a big noticeable wrinkle removed or skin blemishes.
Robby Karam You can’t retouch passport photos ?
What makeup down count as altering the face?
Robby Karam the thing is knowing where to draw the line. IMO if you remove something temporary like blemishes that would heal the following week it is ok. If you star erasing skin mole that are permanent this is when stuff gets slippery very fast
Alexandre this is the basic rule of professional retouching!
Stefan Kohler thanks ,good to know.
Was photographer independent or did they work for a company? I worked for a pretty big company and the residing was a generic option on the form used in schools. Just as the photographer said, it is intended for and used more in middle and high school. The company did not have a social form for each school.
As a parent if I saw this on my young daughter’s school photo order form, I wouldn’t pay for the retouching. I want my daughter to grow up loving who she is blemishes and all. I would contact the company though and have a few harsh words with them and suggest they do two order forms, one for elementary and one for high school.
Michael Bray they have it as an option because many parents regularly ask for it. As you said, don’t check those options if you don’t want those services.
I know as a parent I wouldn’t check the option but yes a lot of parents do check it, which as both a parent and a photographer I find sad, I want my daughter to grow up loving who she is acne and all
You can be proud of who you are and still make adjustments to your appearance – we do it all the time, with make up, hairstyles, clothing and more. The important thing is parents teaching their kids not to put too much value on the opinion of people who judge them purely on that appearance. Photo editing exists, and there may be plenty of good reasons to have a portrait retouched, for example if a child has a playground injury, or if an older child has serious acne and doesn’t want their school photo to be a constant reminder.
It is a service parents these days would demand. Some are outraged if he did, others would throw a tantrum if he didn’t. That’s just the nature of the world today.
I dont know why the outrage – if you don’t want them retouched don’t – for those that do it is a great service
I have retouched my kids photos
When they look at them 10 years
later they don’t have to remember the zits
Just the memory
This is Great for kids whose photo is going in a year book or public display
Having had about 2 decades of experience in dealing with customer desires, and expirations as a photographer the outrage at a photographer offering the service is stupid.
It is offered because people keep having unreasonable expectations of what they should look like. And our use of the dreamy filters, and petty comments that keep reinforcing this stupidity
What is the fuss about? Don’t tell me you dress your child in the worst possible cloths, or give the child the cheapest worst possible hair cut? Why do people use make up; to look good. Retouching is the same.
Idiots always find things to be outraged over ?♂️
They’ve been offering that for my 14 year old daughter’s school pictures since Kindergarten. Some people need to exit the gene pool post haste.
my first thought is that the “customer” for the retouching service is the parents of the 8 year olds – not the 8 year olds – so this is simply providing a service for which customers are willing to pay …
I can see parents buying this if their child had scrapes from that day on the playground or flyaways because they didn’t use the comb they packed for them.
It’s fine. You don’t have to buy it. It’s your choice.
I’m a preschool photographer and I get asked to touch up blemishes and scrapes all the time. I will say I’ve never whitened a kid’s teeth . . . yet.
This has become more or less a standard set of options in school pictures – it was there when my kids were in Pre-K coupla years ago and it continues. And most of those ‘photographers’ don’t even know what photography is!! They get franchise from major chains.
We do school photos and offer retouching. There are plenty of situations where a kid gets a cold sore or scratch on their face. The parents we serve are grateful for this service. If we didn’t offer raining then we’d get angry calls to adding why we don’t offer that service.
The photographer isn’t offering it for 8 year olds, it’s offering it for the parents with ridiculous expectations.
It’s a school photo, not freakin “Glamour Shots”
Lifetouch offers the same thing…not sure what the big deal is.
My kid’s school had this on the order form too. It’s standard, and nothing to be concerned about, unless you search for opportunities to be triggered.
Well f*** all of you, having had horrible ache as a child I would have been so happy to have been offered photo retouching.
Lol u just can’t do anything today
this is one of those circumstances that I DO NOT offer any kind of editing to the subject… even better…. I VERY VERY rarely do kids… only in family photos.