Photographer harshly criticized for ‘shoddy’ Olympic portraits

Phil Young said:
Yes that's right, I can't take a good photo and only rely on Photoshop.

...that conclusion definitely deserves a bonk on the head...how did you come to that?

Photos are not good "enough" coming off camera no, not in my opinion. Every shots should look it's best, again, in my opinion.

The fact that I personally am not.satisfied with a shot until it's processed is my personal opinion and my standards / attention to detail.
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because a) you just backed me up in the second sentance and b) you keep using it as an excuse for why you think theyre bad. :bang: :bonk: there you go.

Lets go over that rather preoposterous list you made to prove a bad photo.


He's a press photographer.
So?

He took these photos as a press photographer.
So? A good thing in my opinion as we didnt end up with processed crap looking like a passport photo.

They are crap.
Why?

They were most likely supposed to look like magazine shots.
How can you say this? did you get a copy of the worksheet from the client? No. Utter nonsence.

He / the company didn't do any kind of post processing.
There you go again, proving my point.

He failed miserably and now has a bad rep for portraits.
Rubbish, he succeeded pretty well and apart from the horrid in front of flag shots did a damn fine job.

So yeah, a good conclusive list of arguments you have there.
 
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Phil Young said:
Come on, I take bad shots every photoshoot, you only see the good ones I've spent time editing.
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Which is what makes me think this wasn't necessarily unintentional - we all have shots that some love and some hate, it's our perception of finished which leads us to publish them through whatever medium

What if I was hired to do a rush job and in my contract I was told to hand over the images straight after and some of my bad shots were published? I wouldn't look too great either because I still "made the shot" but because it wasn't edited, the bad shot sticks out like a sort thumb.

In my opinion, had someone spent time editing these he could have avoided such bad criticism...but obviously not.

Maybe he is a good photographer I don't know, although it appears so from reading this post. However, that doesn't mean every shot a good photographer takes is going to be good.

Joe McNally said out of 250 shots, a client may like 25% and not all of your shoots will be good, some you will test etc...maybe these were testers, handed over and published...who knows, but they are still bad shots whatever the excuse / story.
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I don't consider this to have anything at all to do with editing - this guy is well into his career as a photo journalist and will more than likely hand over unedited shots with a large degree of satisfaction or he wouldn't be getting paid for his images. There isn't any disputing that - he's a working photographer. However, for these to have been handed over, passed by Getty and also published is what leads me to think it was intentional.
 
Well, I like them more than I like the "standard" one with the stars ands stripes. At least they're not the ridiculous tired, warn out and unimaginative cliches we normally see.

That said, that may be more a statement about how much I hate the norm than about how much I like these ones.
 
It's all a bit silly now to be honest...

We're all picking faults with each others arguments just for the sake of it now.

I don't like them, I don't think they demonstrate good quality and standards that (I believe) should have been met with these (I believe) important shots. That's it as far as i'm concerned, scoring points over this has been going on for a bit too long (I believe)...
 
Phil Young said:
I don't like them, I don't think they demonstrate good quality and standards that (I believe) should have been met with these (I believe) important shots. That's it as far as i'm concerned, scoring points over this has been going on for a bit too long (I believe)...
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"But I can't believe Ronald Reagan is President!"

(You have to be a certain age)

:coat:
 
Phil Young said:
Just to point out: the flag one isn't his. It's to demonstrate how this type of image is normally portrayed...

Edit: not pointed to the above post :)
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Yep, and that example demonstrates EXACTLY why he was right to at least TRY something different. It may not have worked (I don't think it did), but I'd rather have 10 of him than a million cliche mongers. Oh hang on, we DO have a million of them!
 
Southdowns said:
Yep, and that example demonstrates EXACTLY why he was right to at least TRY something different. It may not have worked (I don't think it did), but I'd rather have 10 of him than a million cliche mongers. Oh hang on, we DO have a million of them!
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And most people here seem to look up to the cliche
 
Phil Young said:
They aren't good shots and don't belong on a billboard advertising your countries greatest athletes.
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just wondering if you have actualy looked at the pictures ,because you obviously havent read the text ,he's a slovak ( as other posts that you havn't read have pointed out )
 
donutagain said:
just wondering if you have actualy looked at the pictures ,because you obviously havent read the text ,he's a slovak ( as other posts that you havn't read have pointed out )
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So...because he's not American he shouldn't be making the athletes look good?

He's a professional hired to do a job it doesn't matter what country he's from. And yes I know which country he is from.
 
Simon photo said:
Some of us here are pointing out that they think he has done a terrible job at representing the American team
Were hosting the bloody games and come up with this! http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00637/news-graphics-2007-_637115a.jpg
And its price tag was nearly 400k!
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At least it's in focus :D

Was the photographer being ironic?? Post modern? No frikin idea.

Show me a piece of art that everybody likes or a piece of art that nobody likes and I'll lick the underside of my toilet.

Do I like the photographs, No. Why? OOF, bad lighting/composition...etc...etc...etc that's not what I like to see in a photograph.

And, now on with the show....:thumbs:
 
but was the expectation that he would produce 'art' or that he would produce decent pictures of the american team - if it was the former fair enough but if the breif was the latter he shouldnt be making an 'artistic statement' on his clients time
 
but bad art is bad art - if I do a painting its bad no matter how you look at it. if anyone was to think it was good they need their head examined. Same goes for those photos.

heck the first image is not even in focus :lol:

ding76uk said:
Photography is art

Art is subjective

There is bad or good, no right or wrong no matter how much some argue there is
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exactly who released the photo's? and at which point in the editing process?

Sometimes I do a shoot, knowing the client will PP the images, or a colleague will PP the images. usually I PP the images. More often than not my shots exhibit many of the qualities of the the ones shown - with cloning needed and creases and the like needing work. its pretty unavoidable sometimes, especially if you are working fast in a very confined space

Very few photographers out of the confines of their own (large) controlled studio, using someone else's flashes, with a small time-frame could produce much better, let alone when a flash head fails
 
Simon photo said:
And most people here seem to look up to the cliche
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Where are you getting this idea from exactly?

My take on it is the majority here don't like the photos. This is not based on the fact they differ from the expected norm, it is just because they don't like them.

You seem to be continually trying to push the idea that anyone that dislikes them cannot like anything that differs from norm, this seems to be more your issue than theirs.
 
These pictures have been put out by Getty, as I understand things, most of the Forum members here strive to get noticed by Getty who own Flickr. Perhaps some now understand where they were going wrong and have a better idea what that company is looking for, try submitting some pictures of the same high quality as these.

It seems the things you set great store by no longer have any meaning, I came to understand that when I saw the winner of last years Young Landscape Photographer won that category with the picture of a torn armchair in a derelict room, when everyone else seemed to think they needed a picture of the great outdoors
 
Am I the only one who really doesn't give a rats arse about theses pictures? Maybe I should!
 
The Greek said:
Am I the only one who really doesn't give a rats arse about theses pictures? Maybe I should!
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You should if you are adding anything to a thread specifically discussing them but otherwise no :)
 
I don't buy this justification that because he's a photojournalist and not 'into' PP, that we are supposed to accept these as some form of true representation of the athletes. Yes, he may be trying to shoot in an alternative manner to the traditional head-and-shoulders portrait that we commonly see, but despite the context that is shown, this 'behind the scenes' feel just doesn't sit right because of the obvious flaws like the ripped backdrops. What do ripped backdrops actually add to the shot? What do creased flags add to the shot?

I understand that he was working against the clock and that this wasn't an exclusive shoot for him - other photographers were also present - but I'm not sure if that is resin enough for the obvious visual 'breaks from the norm'.
There could be the reason he was ill prepared....

I wonder how the athletes have responded to the shots?
 
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been thinking about this.

Let's assume that Joe Klamar wanted to do what a lot of people are assuming. That is, he did this intentionally to make the athletes appear normal, not superhuman, perfect specimens etc etc.

Well, if that was what he was trying to achieve then I personally think he has done a really poor job of it.

Really poor.

He could have done much better things to achieve that in most of the shots. In fact I think he has done it in some of them. Look at this link:

http://o.canada.com/2012/07/03/joe-klamars-olympic-portraits-are-brilliant/#9-13

and go to the 4th shot along with the badminton guy. He's got a shuttlecock on his head. He looks funny and not some legendary athlete. So job done. If that's what he was trying to achieve then I think he has done it.

But then look through a lot of the rest. They don't achieve the same thing at all, they just look poo. The first shot of the girl in the model pose with all the scum and rips in the background. That doesn't show her as an athlete that is less than perfect etc, it just shows a really ugly unfinished background. That's the case with the majority of the pics.

The only concept he has succeded at getting across is showing what conditions are at a normal photoshoot. Like a behind the scenes featurette on a dvd. What he has done for the majority is nothing at all about the athletes but all about photography technique and conditions - thats it.
 
So he pretty much admits he was caught out, they weren't that great but had a 'something' about them. Certainly contradicts what some of the people on this thread have read into them and is a pretty simple explanation...
 
So there we go, a press photographer thinking he would be on a typical job and got surprised. A big shame for him really because there's nothing he could do but take the shots worth what he had.

The question still stands, why wouldn't they at least try to make them better in post production?!
 
Phil Young said:
So there we go, a press photographer thinking he would be on a typical job and got surprised. A big shame for him really because there's nothing he could do but take the shots worth what he had.

The question still stands, why wouldn't they at least try to make them better in post production?!
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probably because of this...

That last assertion, at least, is demonstrably false. Joe’s photos were picked up by dozens of AFP’s major media clients, including CBS.com, where 27 or the 34 pictures in a montage of US Olympic athletes were taken by Joe. Obviously they thought he was doing something right.
As did his own editors. "Joe was sent to this assignment to do exactly this kind of pictures," explained Mladen Antonov, AFP's photo director for North America. "We chose him because of his ability to see the world through different eyes, unconventional and more original. We wanted something different and we got it!"
 
So he tried to do his best out of a bad situation and for the most part failed. None of it was intentional.
 
It was obviously unintentional. I'm still chuckling over those that thought it was some great art conspiracy.
 
Happy to admit I was wrong. Shame he isn't as good as he thought he was.
 
leftcurl said:
probably because of this...

That last assertion, at least, is demonstrably false. Joe’s photos were picked up by dozens of AFP’s major media clients, including CBS.com, where 27 or the 34 pictures in a montage of US Olympic athletes were taken by Joe. Obviously they thought he was doing something right.
As did his own editors. "Joe was sent to this assignment to do exactly this kind of pictures," explained Mladen Antonov, AFP's photo director for North America. "We chose him because of his ability to see the world through different eyes, unconventional and more original. We wanted something different and we got it!"
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Or were they picked up because it made the team look bad?
 
I have not read this whole thing but all i can say is a love how someone produces terrible work and all of a sudden its some type of statement..... it really could just be that there studio work is terrible.
 
I knocked over my Starbucks and almost choked on my Big Mac reading these replies.
 
So the guy has openly admitted he was caught unprepared for the type of shoot so just did what he could with one flash, and some critics "love them beause they feel so 'real'"?

:lol: I love art.
 
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Simon photo said:
Ahhh well, hidden messages, two fingers to convention, guess i was wrong but im not ashamed to admit it, we all speculated on the reasoning behind or the reason for their look but there you go.
I still like them though.
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At least you had the decency to admit you got it totally wrong. :bat:
 
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