Why natural skin texture matters

The difference between a portrait that feels polished and one that feels plastic often comes down to a single decision: what you leave alone. Skin has pores, fine lines and small variations in tone — and those details are exactly what make a face look alive on the page.

My approach to skin work is subtractive, not covering. I remove temporary distractions — a blemish, a stray shine, a patch of redness — while keeping the texture that belongs to the person. The goal is that nobody can tell the photograph was retouched at all.

This is also why I retouch by hand, image by image. Automated smoothing treats every face the same way, and it shows. A considered finish takes longer, but it respects both the photographer's lighting and the sitter's character.