Spoof critiques of famous photographers

<p> Does anyone have the link to a critique spoof that was circulating awhile ago (maybe a year or so)? It was hilarious...showing very famous images with very bogus critiques.</p>

<p>Yup, that was on Mike Johnston's blog: <a href="http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/great-photographers-on-internet.html"><strong>Great Photographers of the Internet</strong> </a> .</p>

<p>Mike's "Great Photographers" piece is a classic - some of the funniest photography satire I have ever read. It should be required reading for all would-be internet photo critics before they are allowed to post a single sentence.</p>

<p>Fun to read. It really shows that even though your photographs are not necessarily great, as far as technique and composition goes, they can still become famous. There is still hope for the rest of us. Art really is illusive and subjective. More fuel for how unimportant ratings are.</p>

<p>Thanks, I hadn't looked at that in some time. It's too true, too true.<br>

Now does anyone remember the <em>Popular Photography</em> April Fool's Photoshopping of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"? It was hard to find the original article on line for a while, but here is a link to the image next to the original (<a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/photo_database/image/migrant_mother_makeover/">link</a> ).</p>

<p>A large number of people took it seriously and were absolutely outraged!</p>

The critiques may have been bogus but they were spot on. If you are a famous or big bucks photographer you can do anything and get away with it. If the man in the foreground is out of focus, it is not because the photographer forgot to check the depth of field, as we lesser mortals would be accused of, but because he had a greater vision. I do that all the time.

 

<P>"You got the man in the foreground a bit out of focus."

 

<P>Rather than admit that I screwed up I go into, "Ah but that is precisely what I was striving for. The people in the middle ground are going on with their lives and their futures, but the man in the foreground is slipping out of focus and into history".

<P>

"Oh, now I understand. Brilliant!"

<p>Thank you! I am saving it this time...brilliant stuff.</p>

<p>I wonder what happened to my post here?</p>

 

Peter, After you hit the SUBMIT button you have to hit the CONFIRM button. Sometimes I have forgotten to do that and hit the back button or gone somewhere else. Unless a moderator removed it for being offensive, that is most likely the answer.

<p>Actually if the focus had been on the man in the foreground in that Bresson photo, the photo would have sucked. Focus was where it belonged.</p>

<p><em>"It really shows that even though your photographs are not necessarily great, as far as technique and composition goes, they can still become famous"</em><br>

<em>No, that's not at all the point. The point is that people who rely on assorted rules for "technique and composition" generally don't have a clue what they're doing.</em></p>

<p><em>"It really shows that even though your photographs are not necessarily great, as far as technique and composition goes, they can still become famous"</em><br>

<em>No, that's not at all the point. The point is that people who rely on assorted rules for "technique and composition" generally don't have a clue what they're doing.</em></p>

<p>Oh...JDM, I am not getting anything from your link "link appears to be broken"</p>

<p>JDM's link works fine for me, Tiffany. It's the "Migrant Mother Makeover" spoof photo on the Museum of Hoaxes website: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/</p>

<p>Yeah...but ya know....there are a few photographer's on this site that do exactly the same thing. I won't mentioned their names, but the work they tend to tear up is Robert Frank's "The Americans". They just don't get how phenominal this man and that piece of work really was.</p>

<p>But, anyhow....Mike Johnston's blog posting was brilliant!</p>

<p>Thanks Lex...got it. Funny. Not sure why Dorothea didn't just turn the kids toward camera in the original ...it would have been a much better fam port. Maybe that one was taken while the kids needed a little break..hugs from mom. They can be hard to shoot, y'know (>8</p>