Olympic Photos
July 9th, 2012
By now everyone has heard about the the awful photos of America’s Olympic Athletes. If not, here are two links to news stories:
While I don’t normally judge other photographer’s work, I have to acknowledge that these photos are pretty bad. Now here’s the deal, the photographer says he wasn’t prepared for the shoot because he was told he’d be photographing a press conference and didn’t bring the appropriate lighting gear. He had to borrow gear from another photographer. I guess that’s an excuse.
Who I really blame is the agency that hired him. First of all they failed to communicate to photographer the nature of the shoot. Next, they then released the photos without retouching/editing them. I could see no reason why they would not bury these photos. Not that the photos are totally hopeless, With some basic retouching (filling in gaps in the background, fixing tears in the paper background, and some dodging and burning) the photos could be made acceptable.
There has been some talk that the release of the photos was politically motivated (the agency was a French company) with the goal of making America look bad. I don’t know if that’s true, but what reason would they have for releasing such poor photographs of these elite athletes?
Anyway, that’s my take on the situation.
Thanks for reading!!
-Ken