What You See Is NOT Always What You Get

“Is this what the picture will look like?” The woman says as she leans in close to peer at the video capture display.

“It’s pretty close to what it will look like.” I say, knowing that the mirror is never exactly lined up with the camera. “This is just to give you an idea about what the finished portrait will look like.”

“Well,” she says dismissively. “I’m not going to buy a pig in a poke.”

Back in the Dark Ages-about fifteen years or so ago, when you had a portrait taken you came back in two or three weeks and looked at Pre-Printed Portraits.  These were the actual product, often less than perfect actual product, but real and tangible none the less.  You didn’t need to ask if this was how the finish portrait would look, as it WAS the finished portrait.

Over the years a number of electronic preview systems have come and gone.  Some were good, most were ok, and a few were just terrible.  Getting the image on the screen to exactly match the image on the film was often an impossible task.

So we can now flash forward to the Present and the wonderful world of Digital Imaging.  Here we at last have that dreamed of nirvana where the image show is exactly like the image that will be on the Portrait.  Only it still doesn’t always work out that way.

How the system typically works.  The Photographer captures an image.  The Passer shows the image to the Subject-and can then adjust the image-cropping it, moving it this way or that, changing the color, adding a border, zooming in for a nice tight shot, etc, etc, etc.  The image is then shipped off to The Lab, that all powerful force which rules every Assembly Line Portrait Company with an Iron Fist.  They drop the image into a machine filled to the brim with PreSets, flip a switch and process thousands of images an hour.  Then the Subject gets the Portraits in the mail and says-WTF is this?

The system breaks down at any number of points.  The Photographer takes an image assuming that it will be sold pretty much as is.  The Passer assumes that that every image The Photographer takes could be a bit better if they tweaked it a little or a lot.  The Lab assumes that their Laws of Composition are being followed to the letter, even though we were told not that long ago to forget all those stodgy old rules and do what the hell ever we wanted to do.  The Subjects look at an image and, for reasons still beyond me, often assume that it will be vastly different from what they see on the screen.  So that they expect out of frame body parts to be restored or a silhouette to be brightly illuminated or the colors on a piece of paper to perfectly match the colors on a monitor.

It’s better than it used to be, and I tend to think that it is as close to perfect as it will ever be with Assembly Line Portraits, but it is not perfect.  There are too many cooks stirring the pot, too many expectations about what the images should look like, and ultimately no real incentive to correct what isn’t working.

A common comment these days is that Photography must be easier now that we have Digital Cameras.  Well, yes and no.  It is easier to catch blinks and kids making goofy faces and it is easier for the Subject to get a retake while they are still dressed up.  And no, the camera is the smallest bit of business in the studio-so all the lights, stands, props, and backgrounds remain the same and take the same amount of effort to setup and teardown.  The biggest difference that Digital imaging has brought is in the expectations of our Subjects and in the Subjects ability to make their own images.  These are not improvements to the Assembly Line Portrait world.

So what we end up with is a close approximation to the Finished Portrait-sometimes a very close approximation.  Add to the mix the Geewhiz Portraits, many of which look like simple mistakes by The Photographer-and you have Subjects who ae not pleasantly surprised by the portraits they receive.

We all lie for a living in the Assembly Line Portrait business. Pressellers all say You Need a New Directory, Photographers all say That Portrait Looks Great, and Passers all say You Look Wonderful in that Portrait.  These are acceptable lies.  We need Shoots booked.  We want the people to think that they look good in their portraits.  We want them to  buy those portrait that they think they look so good in.

Unacceptible lies are on a whole other level from the normal lying that is part and parcel of the job.  These include the Presellor telling the Shoot Coordinator that they can have a background color we don’t have or that a group of thirty is no problem.  A bad lie involves anyone, Photographer or Passer, telling a Subject that The Lab will Fix It-when they know damn well The Lab will NOT fix anything.  The worst lie is a  Passer who tells the Subject the image will look fundamentally different than it does on the screen-or encourages them to make the assumption that the image will look a good deal different.

So the Subject may see the image they are going to get clear as day on the Passer’s Monitor, but they are either told it will not look like that, or they assume themselves that it will not look like that.   This sets up the classic failing to meet the customers expectations.

And if everyone has done exactly what they are supposed to do and The Portraits actually ship not looking the way they do on the Monitor, well, that’s just annoying.  But it happens.

Oh, one more thing.  If you do get a portrait you hate, don’t bring it to me and tell me how much you hate it.  I don’t want to hear it.  And I can’t help you anyway.  Call Customer Service and have fun waiting for someone to pick up.  You might want to have a good book handy.