What Before-And-Afters Leave Out

I hate before-and-after comparisons.

That's probably a strange thing to hear from someone who makes part of his living taking photographs of people. But there's something about the whole exercise that has always rubbed me the wrong way.

Here's what this person looked like before working with me. Here's what they look like now. Look at the incredible transformation I created.

Eh. The victory lap doesn’t do much for me.

During a recent presentation, I had an exchange with someone in the room about this exact topic.

I'd been showing examples from a speaker kit I'd helped a client improve. We spent about 90 minutes reviewing his existing photos, reading the copy, and identifying which images made the most sense alongside the words.

We ended up changing roughly 60 to 70 percent of the photographs in the original design.

Someone asked whether I had the previous version available so she could see what changed.

My immediate reaction? I told the room how much I hate before-and-afters.

Her response was that seeing the original version would help everyone understand my thinking. What had I changed? Why had I made those decisions?

In hindsight, she had a point. Because my problem was never really with comparison itself. It was with the story before-and-after marketing usually tells.

The old work was the problem. The new work fixed it. And the creative professional deserves a round of applause. That's not how I approach the work.

The changes aren't nearly as interesting as the reasons behind them.

When we went through that speaker kit, we weren't replacing photographs because the originals looked like shit. We were trying to understand what each section needed to communicate.

What was the copy saying? What did a potential buyer need to understand about this speaker's expertise and the experience he delivers? Were the photographs helping communicate those things, or were they simply occupying space?

Some of the original images were perfectly good photographs.

They just weren’t the right photographs for what those sections needed to communicate.

That’s the distinction.

A before-and-after comparison could show someone which photographs changed. But without the reasoning behind those changes, all they're really seeing is two different versions of the same document.

The more valuable conversation is about why those decisions were made in the first place.

The strategy determines what needs to be created, too.

The same thinking applies when I'm creating new photography for an expert.

The old photographs aren't the creative starting point.

I'm not particularly interested in studying somebody's headshots from five years ago so I can figure out how to make them look better this time around.

And I'm certainly not opening mood boards filled with other photographers' work so we can recreate somebody else's idea of what a successful expert looks like.

I want to understand the person sitting in front of me.

Who are you? What does your business look like today? Who are the people you serve? What happens when you're working with them? What makes your approach different? How do you want to be seen by potential buyers and decision makers?

From there, we can look at what buyers need to understand, what evidence already exists, what’s missing, and where the new photographs actually need to work.

Now we have something meaningful to work toward.

There’s a tremendous amount of thinking involved before a camera enters the equation. And none of it requires opening up the old photo album and figuring out how to make a prettier version.

None of this means the past is irrelevant.

If I’m evaluating someone’s current visual presence, of course I want to see the website, speaker kit, LinkedIn profile, old photographs, and body of work.

That helps identify what still works, what’s missing, and what no longer reflects the business.

But those older choices are evidence, not instructions. 

The business may have changed. The audience may have changed. The offers, personality, priorities, and direction may have changed too. The expert probably looks different.

So the question isn’t:

How do we improve what you did last time?

It’s:

What needs to be true now?

So, was the woman who asked for the original speaker kit right?

Yes. 

She wasn’t asking me to congratulate myself for making the “after” better. She wanted to see the thinking. That’s the kind of before-and-after I can get behind.

Not look how much better I made this, but here’s what changed, here’s why it changed, and here’s what that decision was meant to accomplish.

Because the difference between two visual choices isn’t nearly as interesting as the thinking that made one of them more useful.