It's not the bike!

A few months back, I needed to have some formal pictures of myself taken for an official press release. Naturally, I was told this just a day before the pictures were actually needed. Now these pictures needed an official corporate setting as the background, so what I thought of was to have someone skilled enough to handle a camera to click a few pix in the office.

So I brought along my semi-professional camera to the office, and asked a colleague to click my pictures, with the official company banner providing a suitable background. Now this guy has been proclaiming himself to be a professional photographer, and in fact, has been handing his visiting card around which has his name in a fancy font and duly gives his designation as "Photographer". Apparently he has been getting commissions on clicking portraits, covering weddings etc.

So one might assume that I was in safe hands, as far as getting a nice clear pic was concerned.

I don't want to turn this into a suspense thriller, so let me say right now that the pix did come out okay.

No, what gave me some food for thought was when during this photoshoot, I asked him if he could take a few pix with me in the foreground in sharp relief against a slightly unfocused company logo in the background.

So what does this skilled photographer say? "Well, my own professional SLR camera does have a switch which creates this effect, but since your camera doesn't have that switch, I can't do it."

Say what?

I, with my admittedly elementary knowledge of photography, had made it a point to read up as much as I could on the basics of photography, once I bought my camera last year. I visited various sites on the net, studied all the technical terms, even though not everything made sense immediately, but I persevered. And one of the first few things I learnt was F-stops which is essentially the aperture (or the hole through which the image is captured). The larger this aperture value, the smaller the opening through which light passes into the camera, and the sharper the background.

So to get a slightly hazy background, all you need to do is use a smaller F-stop value on the camera.

I felt like quoting the title of Lance Armstrong's autobiography to this guy, "It's Not About The Bike!"

But more than that, this incident made me think about why we perceive someone as experts in their field. Just because they themselves said so?

I find myself constantly downplaying my own skills and/or knowledge, because I (and most Indians) have been brought up and socially indoctrinated to feel that humility and a self-effacing attitude are what makes a person. Being a show-off and blowing one's own trumpet were always frowned upon as being boorish and undesirable.

Social mores seem to have changed though, even in the home country. A me-first attitude seems to have taken over. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Nonetheless, I still believe in this adage,"A truly knowledgeable person knows that he doesn't know anything."

To add a twist to that, here's Mrs. Golda Meir to a diplomat,"Don't be so humble. You are not that great."