Tin: What the world owes this dull grey metal

The thinkstock smd solder pix is doing it wrong. The board was obviously solder paste assembled (look at the unused pads) and its had the flux cleaned off yet there's a (probably photoshopped) swirl of flux smoke. I can do rework with a hand iron but joe average probably needs to use hot air rework, so they don't even have the correct kind of tool in the photo. Also the iron does not appear to have ever been tinned or used before and possibly is not on and possibly by complete lack of oxidation has never been powered up. If you try to do rework by shoving the point into the component thats not going to work very well.

Finally having fun trying to ID the soldering iron. Its not from the Hakko/Aoyue family like I have at home. Wellers don't clamp like that either. I googled around and its a brand new unused harbor freight model. Given how much harder open loop temp control makes everything, I don't think it would be my first choice for rework or assembly.

It is an interesting educational display of depth of field.

There is the meta issue that is semi-relevant that in some ways its harder to do a bad job than a good job AND it'll jar anyone who knows what they're doing away from your "message" so there is little point in halfway measures with graphics arts. And no fair hiding behind "its just popular science filler so who cares about techies" because its superbowl sunday, ONLY the techies are going to be reading about tin today.