De-skill: to reduce the level of skill needed for a job.
Many tasks today require less skill to perform due to advancing technology. But when something requires less skill, some people wrongly assume that it also requires less creativity, less expertise and less talent. A good example of this is photography.
For the third time in seven weeks, a company sent me business headshots they wanted fixed. It was plainly obvious that all of these companies had used amateur photographers (or a really bad professional).
Fixing Cheap Photography
A small law firm today sent two business portraits and a list of what they wanted fixed:
– fix the uneven brightness of the faces
– make skin colour better
– the eyes are too dark. Make brighter.
– replace the [office] background with a plain background
– add shoulders to each person and make the pictures square
The EXIF data of these two headshots showed that the pictures were shot with a bottom-end camera at 1/4 sec., f4.5, ISO 1600, at 32mm on an 18-55mm lens with a focus distance of 70cm (my arm is 68cm long). All of this screams “amateur.”
A tripod must have been used for these headshots because the faces were reasonably sharp despite the ridiculous 1/4-second exposure time. Each face was lit by nearby windows on one side and office lights on the other. So one side of each person’s face was overexposed and the other side was very underexposed and yellow-magenta. The eyes were very dark.
Each person’s face was distorted because of the short focal length of the lens. Their shoulders and lower neck were cut off because the camera was so close. The photographer must have taken “headshot” too literally.
There was nothing I could do to fix the distorted faces. To add shoulders and some upper body, make the photos wider and add a plain background, I blended the heads onto somewhat similar business portraits of other people I had photographed last year. It wasn’t perfect but it was passable.
I suggested that a reshoot with a professional photographer was the best way to go. They replied that they didn’t have the budget. But they paid me $175 plus tax to partially fix their free photos.
Why hire a professional?
Anyone can push a camera shutter button so why hire a professional?
A study published in 2018 examined the difference between professional and amateur photos published in one US newspaper. The conclusions included:
• Professional images were significantly more emotionally appealing.
• Human interest appeared significantly more in professional photographs than non-professional photographs.
• Professional photographs were published significantly larger than non-professional photographs.
• Professional photos were placed more prominently than non-professional photos.
This study looked only at photos in a newspaper because those images were easily available and, by their credit lines, were easily identifiable as professional or non-professional. But there’s no reason why the same conclusions wouldn’t be reached when looking at other fields of photography. Professional photos are more appealing to readers and are more successful at communicating a message.
Talent, Creativity, Expertise
It’s easy to operate a camera, everyone does it on their cell phone. The difference between a camera operator and a professional photographer is that a professional has talent, creativity and expertise.
Talent is something we’re born with and then hopefully it’s recognized and enhanced later in life.
Creativity is a vision; it’s a way in which we do, or will do, something.
Expertise is learned knowledge and is increased through practice.
Talent is potential. Creativity is the application of that potential. Expertise is the performance of that application.
To rephrase that in photography terms:
If you want professional quality photography then you have to hire a professional photographer. Anyone can push a camera shutter button but only a professional can blend talent, creativity and expertise to do produce the right image for you.
