Are accurate skin colors always necessary for a portrait?

    (click on photos to enlarge)

I think accurate skin color is not always necessary when creating portraits. In fact, when I end up with a few hundred pictures of the subject after a typical photo shoot, I find it quite boring rendering every single one with a normal skin color. I truly believe that changing the hue often dramatically improves even the most ordinary photograph, making it far more interesting. It's one of those transformations that can make an image pop.

Additionally, changing the color can change the photo's mood. For example, blue can imply coolness, sadness, melancholy, or depression; red can denote rage, danger, heat, love, or passion; yellow can symbolize sickness, glory, splendor, or power; green, to me, just seems to make the picture look weird.

My color changes are almost always done in postproduction. I primarily use Adobe Camera Raw, the program included with the Adobe Photoshop subscription. Additionally, I may make a few more adjustments using a program called Nik Software.

Initially, I prefer viewing the subject's normal skin color. This is usually the default hue because I've already white balanced my camera before I begin photographing. And, if I want her skin color to be more precise, I'll click on something in the picture that’s white, gray, or black, using the White Balance Tool in Adobe Camera Raw. Or, if I’ve taken a few photos of her holding a photographic gray card, I’ll click on that instead. This should produce the most precise (or close to it) color. It’s then that I may consider making changes to the subject's color.

The preceding pictures are just a few of the many I've colored over the years. As you can see, the hue change on some is subtle and more extreme on others. My reasons for coloring them, as noted above, included one or more of the following:

• When reviewing the images from the photo shoot, I got bored seeing only normal skin color.
• There was something about the composition or the model's expression that called for added offbeatness.
• The image seemed a bit uninteresting, therefore needing a visual boost.

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