And People Think It’s Just The Youths Who Are Overly Phone-Centered

Several years ago, I was working with a small business owner in his forties who wanted a website. He’d been sending me group pictures of his office managers, but they were poor-quality images, with bad lighting, taken at an angle, and using the lowest image quality setting his cell phone offered. Essentially, they were the worst possible images he could give me for what he had in mind.

Client: “I don’t like the way those look. I look orange. Fix them.”

Me: “Yeah, the skin tones are a little off. I think it’s because of the lighting in the room you took the photos in. I have already color-corrected them to the best of my ability, and there’s not much else I can do since these were taken with your phone in poor lighting.”

Client: “Well, my skin doesn’t look that way in real life. And the image is blurry!”

Me: “Is there a way you can have the photos redone? Maybe with a better-quality camera?  That would solve a lot of these problems.”

Client: “My phone is the newest iPhone they make!”

Me: “Well, I would recommend either increasing the photo resolution settings or maybe just seeing if you could borrow someone’s digital camera if you don’t know how to change the settings on your phone.”

Client: “Digital… camera?”

Me: “Yeah, you know — it’s a camera that stores photos on a memory card?”

Client: “You mean like an iPhone 4?”

Me: “No. A camera. A digital camera. Like the old cameras that use film, but this one uses a memory card? Do you know anyone who has one?”

Client: “Well, I know someone who has an iPhone I could borrow…”

Me: “Okay, but if he doesn’t know how to change his camera settings, either, taking another photo at the lowest resolution isn’t going to help much.”

Client: “I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU WANT ME TO TAKE PICTURES WITHOUT A PHONE!”