Thoughts on the 6 pics of the same guy

[conropl]

Who cares if it's truth or fantasy? As long as you don't mis-represent what you've done. No harm done after all. Another form of "glamour shots" perhaps.

I think that is a far assessment, and I agree.

What bugs me about what this guy did was he skewed the data to justify his preconceived thoughts about peoples prejudices. It seems to me he had a mind set that people judge, or even worse discriminate based on preconceived mind sets. Then he set up a lie and went about proving it by playing off peoples naivete, trust, and unwillingness to be confrontational.

On the other hand, it does help to confirm something I have always suspected. That is, if an outgoing person comes in, spills their guts to a photographer, and communicates it well; it is going to be easy for the photog to develop a shoot in his head and the client will probably get good results and feel it represents him well. However, if a introvert/humble person comes in and has a hard time communicating or (more importantly) selling themselves, then that person may not end up with a good representation of them-self if the photographer was not able to get them to open up. And once again, the humble person gets the shaft. However, this is where a photographer needs to be a really good people person to effortlessly draw information out of people and assess what is important and what is not. The technical side of photography can be taught for the most part, but to be really good at portraiture it would seem to me that you also need to be a really good people person and great communicator in order to be consistently good across many different personalities. Probably the same for most good leaders.

Sorry... way off topic. The rant lives on.

[DavidEccleston]

I don't think the point was "Ha, ha, I fooled you, sucker!" It was more of "Open your mind. Don't just plan the stereotypical shot of person X."

Perhaps an inmate would prefer a friendly shot to a brooding image that reminds him of his past. He might not realize it until you show him. Think of how many ways you can portray your client, and figure out what works best together.

[HDNitehawk]

Not much of an experiment. Isn't portraiture about fantasy anyway?

I remember my senior pics over a few years (lie) ago. Even in those days they cleaned up your pics and got rid of your acne and defects. It is how you want to look.

I see it as a photographers flaw in this video. Your told someone is an ex con or a former alcoholic. As a good photographer would you shoot someone with that perspective? Wouldn't you dig past that, does this person doesn't want to be represented that way any more?

Photography is a medium to tell story's with, and pictures do lie. Photo journalism is probably the worst, they represent what is supposed to be fact and is often not. I have worked on many high profile projects, often they are in the paper or on the local news cast. I can tell you from first hand knowledge that the press seldom gets a story accurate. Another case in point is the US presidential candidates, almost every picture of Trump in an article lately is with his mouth open and yelling. Maybe it is all fantasy and entertainment anyway and press photos are just used to get ratings, regardless I still think Bill Clinton as first man would be very entertaining regardless of your political beliefs.

[Kayaker72]

"....artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up."

---Evey Hammond "V for Vendetta"