At least we have something. It's somehow an additional layer of sadness when there's an identification and there are no photos at all, even when they have living, loving family. Not a mug shot (Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, for the longest time, all we had was awful mugshots, but I've seen nice pictures more recently), not a yearbook picture, nothing. I like that they engraved Joseph Zarelli's NCMEC recon on his headstone. That felt right. I doubt anyone took a picture of that baby his whole life until the police and the medical examiner.
Often, only having a poor quality black and white is a relic of the predigital era, of photocopies and newsprint. We're going to see fewer of those as time goes on. What we are seeing more of is the only picture supplied has a Snapchat or Instagram filter on it. I hate that, especially in missing persons cases, because the real person often looks very different from an image with a heavy filter that smooths and changes skin tone (especially dark skinned people, they seem to lighten a lot) and distorts features like eye shape and noses. I've seen a filtered image and an unfiltered image of the same person, and I honestly could have had a conversation with the misper and had the filtered image right in front of me and not recognised the actual person as being the same individual.
MOO