The business side of photography
Almost everyone exhibits some degree of “optimism bias.” This means we tend to underestimate the time, cost and effort needed to complete a certain task and we overestimate our chances of success.
Optimism is great, it helps us move forward. But optimism doesn’t wait for all the facts to come in. So sometimes you need to be aware of possible optimism bias.
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Canada’s 2015 federal election is days away and each party has released its platform. Let’s compare them from a photographer’s point of view.
• Green Party platform is 44 pages and 5.8 MB in file size.
• NDP brochure is 81 pages and 5.1 MB in size.
• Liberal Party platform is 88 pages and 10.6 MB.
• Conservative Party brochure is 159 pages and 37.4 MB.
That alone might be very telling.
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Yesterday at 5:50am (Eastern Time), it was announced that a Canadian scientist from Queen’s University, in Ontario, had co-won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics. By 6:20am, or maybe even earlier, news media were calling Queen’s University media relations people to request handout pictures of the new Nobel Laureate.
Queen’s University was prepared and news media around the world had a portrait of the university professor emeritus on their web sites shortly thereafter.
The Nobel Prize-winning professor did his research at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Sudbury, Ontario. News media called the lab early in the morning for handout pictures of the scientist and of its research facilities.
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A Canadian federal election will happen in about six weeks. In its campaigning, the Conservative Party apparently likes to use cheap stock pictures in its marketing.
On at least four occasions, those stock pictures, and stock video, had nothing to do with Canada or with what the political party was trying to promote. All the photos were shot in other countries.
No one at the Conservative Party probably gave any thought to using cheap stock pictures other than “they’re cheap!” The pictures have now backfired and the party has become an even bigger punchline.
The wealthy Conservative Party could’ve hired Canadian photographers to shoot timely pictures of real Canadian subjects in Canada. The party could’ve stood behind its words by supporting Canadian small business. It could have led by example. But the Conservatives decided it wasn’t worth it.
Sadly, this is not the first time a political party has done this.
Every business should know this by now: cheap stock pictures don’t work, they do not create a unique message, they’re boring to look at. Oh wait. Maybe that is the message of the Conservative Party.
When you cut corners by using cheap stock photos, you fool no one but yourselves. Stock pictures are worthless when you’re trying to build credibility and trust.
LinkedIn offers each user a personalized page of potential connections titled “People You May Know.” From a quick look today at my page of potential business connections (I’ve blacked out personal names and company names), I don’t recognize any of these people:
If any of those faces look like you, perhaps it’s time to put on your game face.
Two examples of bad photography decisions:
• The City of Toronto’s web site has a page promoting its new Pan Am BMX course that was used in the recent 2015 Pan Am Games. The photo shows a number of female competitors lined up at the starting gate.
The problems with the photo are that the event shown is not from the Pan Am Games, the track is not the city’s new BMX course and the location isn’t even in Toronto. Oops.
Some sports web sites in South America assumed this really was a Pan Am photo and used it in their news articles about the Pan Am BMX event. To be fair, those South American web sites were probably confused since the Toronto Pan Am Games itself initially used the same handout(?) picture on its BMX pages. Oops.
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The Globe and Mail took a look at some of the photographs that Canada’s top three political leaders use in their social media. The newspaper asked a neutral third party, a US photo editor and consultant, to review the pictures.
Without knowing the leaders, their political parties or any other backstory, photo consultant Mike Davis gave his opinions of the pictures.
Stephen Harper photos:
“It’s very linear, very simplistic, not at all dynamic or deep. … It’s all very similar, it’s very distant, very removed from the person. It kind of represents him as an entity who does official things, and that’s about all you get. … These are just official records of events.”
