It started with a monkey.
I was asked to update a profile picture for an employee and what they submitted was a horizontally aligned image (off to a bad start) of the employee…with a live monkey on their shoulder.
There was no amount of cropping that could have removed the monkey and the alignment didn’t give me a lot of room to work. I did my best – informing the department of the problem with the alignment making for a very small image. And suggesting that the department members could participate in a free “headshot” event for professional photos.
I realized that my own profile picture could stand to be updated/more professional since I was wearing my favorite (at the time) hat. It was a nice hat and a good photo, but could be more professional.
So, I participated in the headshot event and got a great picture taken – and added that to my own profile.
A few months later, that same department had a new photo submitted for a new employee. In this black-and-white photo (again, off to a bad start) the male employee was shirtless with his arms raised. Except you couldn’t see his arms as they were covered by a looped length of clothes dryer vent pipe.
This one I managed to crop to something more reasonable, but it was still…odd.
Recently, I got asked to help with another new employee – in a different department. The first photo was square (bad starts all around) and the background had been removed – but not well. It was just this person’s face and then white space to the edge. It was too small to work with and I asked that they submit a new one.
The next one looked like they had found the photo they liked – though a little too close up – and set that as the background for their phone. Then, they took a screenshot of that image – including the date/time, the gallery open, the location and battery level – and sent that image over.
I responded back to the department with the issues that no amount of photoshop could fix and provided notes on how they could get a better profile photo. Those were all ignored and they simply said someone was going to take a photo of them and submit it.
Version three was a .heic file (really?) and was gigantic. They were outside next to a railing and were making hand gestures that I assumed were sign language. They also weren’t centered in the photo and while I was able to crop and resize this down, one of their hands was hidden.
I had to ask the program director if the new ‘one-handed’ sign was still appropriate and they confirmed it was. So, that one was done.
The next two employee photos were one that was too small, but scaled up okay-ish. And the other was not centered and looking over their shoulder in a ¾ turn. I’m not sure I could have moved like that to have my photo taken that way.
A third did an “over-the-shoulder” view – but with her shoes highlighted hanging down her back by the laces. Sigh.
Today – and what prompted this post – was a colleague that I’d known for years and was asking me to upload a new photo for her profile.
And she had gone overboard with the filters – to the point where she looked like she was a badly generated A.I. person. The whites of her eyes were a little too white and a little too perfectly balanced. Her hair was a little too perfect and her skin a little too smooth and a little too even.
She had “uncanny valleyed” herself.
(The Uncanny Valley is a term used to describe an image that is between “not at all a person” (i.e. cartoon or puppet) and a photo of a real person. The almost-but-not-quite-a-person freaks humans out almost universally, but no one is quite sure why.)
I know she had gone through some medical treatments that had impacted her hair and that she’s more self-conscious about her appearance as a result, but as glamor shots go, it was over the top.
I cropped and resized this anyway and she was pleased with the update.
It’s strange to see the variations from the standard that people are submitting. My new rule of thumb is: “Would you go to an important meeting – like an interview or performance review with the president – looking like you do in your profile photo?”
Hence the lack of a sweet hat for me.
Lacking the authority to enforce, well…anything, I can only do my best to fit these entries to a standard and encourage employees to attend a headshot event.
Especially the woman with the monkey.