The business of photography and retouching
Do you think these two people are attractive?
The woman’s face is a mathematical average of 55 female business portraits I did last year. The man’s face is an average of 50 male portraits. The headshots used included a wide variety of people ranging in age from early 20s to early 70s.
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If you’re reluctant to get a new business portrait because you think you don’t have the looks of a movie star, then science is on your side.
A 2013 Princeton University study (link to PDF) found that a person with average facial appearance is perceived to be more trustworthy than someone with above-average looks. In fact, the perceived trustworthiness of a less than average-looking person was found to be about the same as for a very attractive person.
. . . we found consistent evidence for the notion that face typicality is an important determinant of perceived trustworthiness . . .
We’re also more attracted to average-looking faces. Many thousands of years of evolution have hardwired us to prefer average looks. Remember that most actors and models are only average looking (link to PDF) and they just have better stylists than the rest of us :-)
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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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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.
Most portrait photography advice is technical such as what lens to use, how to position lights, what pose to use, etc. This is the easiest advice to offer but it’s also the least valuable.
You can do a good portrait with almost any lens in almost any type of light. The reason is that the content of a portrait always trumps the technical aspects of the photo.
Viewers don’t look at a portrait and say, “Wow, look at that lens choice!” or “I really like that 3:1 light ratio.” If a viewer notices the technique before the subject then the photographer has failed.
The most important factor in creating a good portrait is the ability to capture the moment when the subject’s character, personality or, to be overly dramatic, their soul, is reflected in their face.
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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.”
