Don McCullin’s Guardian article on digital photography got me thinking about the amount of retouching and digital manipulation that we are now surrounded by. Glossed images in magazines and on the web have become the norm and we only seem to notice when something has not been ‘cleaned up’. I do not necessarily mean removing a spot or tidying up a distracting background, although that is very handy! For me retouching has become a means to an end when dealing with difficult subject matter and that is, perhaps, where it is best used. I shot a large vacuum forming machine for a client, Formech International Ltd, last month in the engineering workshop where it was made. This machine was the largest that they had built to date and measured approximately 4m x 4m x 2m high. You will see from the before and after shot that getting a good angle and being able to produce a clean product shot relied partly on good photographic skills and largely on retouch. The machine could not be moved and so it comes down to manipulation to make the final image work. Retouching is here to stay but it comes down to using it when it is necessary and not as a default.    Formech 2440SA Vacuum Form