I took a job of photographing mug shots portraits for a Chinese company. It was fairly easy; I just had them stand in front of a white wall while I use an external flash to bounce the ceiling for light.
So I asked the company boss what the portraits are for. She said we are making a company blog, to market our products and services and I want all my employees to write in this blog.
Me: So do you want me to crop just the face or include half the chest up?
Boss: Oh I think I will just need the face, and besides, I want their faces to be unrecognizable.
Me: Unrecognizable? Why would you want that?
Boss: Well my employees are quite young, and if clients see that the company they are doing business with have young faces, our company would not be quite credible.
Me: uhm… you want their faces blurred?
Boss: Well, maybe a little bit cartoonish, just like *the other company*.
And so, here they are my cartoon portraits. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I even had a little talk with the internet guy and asked why his boss wanted to have the faces cartoonized. He said, why not? If people see that we are in our mid-20s, customers will think we are amateurs and have no experience! People would want to see older, maybe like 40 or 50 something professionals in our site.
And I also remember talking to this Taiwanese woman working as a film producer here in Beijing. She said she loves it here, it’s just it’s quite hard to get the approval of the bigger boss especially if they see you’re young. I remember her saying the 35-somethings are close-minded, they don’t listen to you and they’re not open to ideas, I like the younger generation, they’re more open to ideas and honestly, they are very talented it’s just a shame the older ones don’t give them opportunity.
PS. There’s a single foreigner in that set. Can you guess which one? He/She is French.
