I’m sitting in a casting in Bree Street with 12 of the most beautiful women on the continent waiting outside. One by one the most models walk in to the room and the fashion editor whispers in my ear, “too giraffe-like”, “mouth is too small and Parisian”, “too short”, “too roundish”, “no boobs”, “too much boob”. Many of these women have been on the covers of international fashion magazines, featured in the likes of GQ or FHM, or graced the latest Sports Illustrated calendar. By all accounts they are extremely beautiful, and if I had chanced to meet them on any other ordinary day, say, in Vida queue while ordering my single skinny latte, I would battle to keep my jaw off the ground while I stare on embarrassingly.

But I do stare. Not because I’m mesmerized, but because I’m trying to work out what they would look like with different make-up and completely different lighting and styling. I’m trying to imagine how they would look through a 24-70mm f2.8 lens with a 5-foot Profoto Octobox camera right with double diffusion. And not just models, I often find myself analyzing people’s faces when I see them on the street, driving in cars, buying a movie ticket. I try to be subtle about it, but often people catch my eye. It’s amazing how your notion of beauty changes when you really start analyzing the structure of a face, and also once you understand what you can do with a face in a shoot.

Studies have revealed that a strong indicator of physical beauty is actually averageness. A hundred years ago, a scientist cousin of Charles Darwin first noticed this when creating photographic composites of faces. He found that while a single face could be ordinary looking, if you overlay more faces, the composite of the faces together becomes distinctly more attractive. In fact, as more faces are overlaid, the composite face becomes closer and closer to the “ideal” image of beauty. The image at the top of the page shows an example. Starting with an ordinary face, the composite is transformed into a ideally beautiful face as more faces are added. The face becomes a beautiful average.

So I guess this means that it’s a compliment if somebody tells you that you’re really average-looking?