These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public

These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public

The Olympic Committee’s Media Summit in Dallas, Texas was held back in May of this year. A number of photographers were invited to shoot the event. Joe Klamar was one of the the photographers who captured portraits of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team. Once the images became public, people were not pleased with the outcome and it went viral. We’d like to hear your thoughts and let us know what you think of the coverage and if you agree with the current public opinion.

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Lindsey Berg of the US Olympic Volleyball team

bross 144490285 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Rebecca Bross of the US Olympic Gymnastics team

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Shot putter Jillian Camarena-Williams of the US Track and Field Olympic team

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Debbie Capozzi of the US Women’s Olympic Sailing team

demus 144372426 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Lashinda Demus of the US Track and Field Olympic team

douglas 144490785 540x405 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Gaby Douglas of the US Olympic Gymnastics team

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Tony Gunawan of the US Badminton Olympic team

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Brendan Hansen of the US Swimming Olympic team

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Kayla Harrison of the US Judo Olympic team

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Jonathan Horton of the US Olympic Gymnastics team

krug 144486019 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Cassidy Krug of the US Diving Olympic team

liukin 144490789 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Nastia Liukin of the US Olympic Gymnastics team

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Siblings Diana Lopez and Steven Lopez of the US Taekwondo Olympic team

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Leshawn Merritt of the US Track and Field Olympic team

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Michael Phelps of the US Olympic Swimming team

robles 144314289 These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public
Sarah Robles of the US Olympic Weightlifting

You can find more in at the gallery here.

[Via Solstice via CBS News]

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1141203452 Joe Dassaro
Uh yeah. They are weak even by amateur standards. I am not sure what they are supposed to be. I did not read where they were “the official” portraits, so I reserve final judgement.
Joe Dassaro
http://www.dassaro.com
Robert Simpson
These have to be an ill-conceived joke of some kind, surely. A back-firing publicity stunt possibly?
yoyophoto
shocking
http://twitter.com/tobiassolem Tobias Solem
I especially like how cropped they are and how the paper is torn, and the angles all weird. The focus is not too bad, and the lighting is … well, creative I guess.
http://twitter.com/byCarlsson Niklas Carlsson
I’m actually mostly interested in what it was that people were unhappy about. To me it’s a series of pretty bad images, but that’s just my personal feeling based on being a professional for a bunch of years. But I see bad images everywhere, so I’m not sure why this would stand out. Are they as Joe was asking official portraits or just images that someone shot at a meet up?
http://twitter.com/JasonMyersPhoto Jason Myers
They are being prominently displayed on CBS website…http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-33747_162-10012296.html?tag=page One word AWFUL
http://twitter.com/rmaspero Rupert Maspero
Are these the final shots? they seriously can’t be.
Mike Stahl
Best. Shots. Eva!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1538831151 John-Paul Zajackowski
Uhm… Really?
I usually don’t like to bash on people’s creative work, but I would figure that imagery of the highest caliber would be used to portray the finest athletes in what is arguably the most prestigious of all sporting events. With that being said, a good picture may be different from one person to the next. Art may be art to one person, but not to another. Me personally, I don’t think that set is up to snuff.
Mike_Kelley
These look like they came off of that ‘you are not a photographer’ blog.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1111714644 Lana Krtalic
One word! FAIL!!!!
sunfishracer
Joe Klamar’s photos are the worst of the bunch. He is a European sports photographer , and not a portrait photographer, and it shows. He probably doesn’t care about taking good photos of American Athletes, just sending in a bunch of bad snapshots to his agency, Getty Images. This was shot during a Media Day, so I am sure it was hectic, but if he couldn’t rise to a good professional or even good amateur level, he should be ashamed of this work. Couldn’t they get other portraits from other photographers, since this was a media day?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GXAKQR2CFXIJFY3ZPFS654TEMQ ClarkL42
I agree with most of the comments. Incredibly amateurish, poorly lit and poorly composed. I don’t know anything about the photographer but these seem worse than the results I see when someone hands a point and shoot to the company administrative and says you’re the company photographer.
http://twitter.com/Stoutlagger Rob
I hope these aren’t the official shots… Absolutely horrible set. I think Helen Keller could have done a better job.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=557998850 John Flury
Those images look like pictures that were made by someone who experiments around with external flash for the first time, while at the same time being uninspired, uncreative and most of all uneducated about what good studio portrait photography is (or might be, nothing wrong with breaking the rules).
Chris_Hoffmann
I agree with all of the comments already posted. With so many great American portrait photogs, why are these the photos that were chosen?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=752745153 Jimmy Kuhn
I dropped my camera once and took a better series of portraits.
http://www.facebook.com/kansasfoundamerica Chris Kansas Känz
lol are these from the early 90′s? so cheesy not to mention terrible.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=513491871 Gen Levy
I truly can’t believe that Getty would want their name associated with these images. This is a sad moment for our industry.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Filip-Karlsson/622342253 Filip Karlsson
After seeing this i dont know what to say!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1055310031 Jacquelynn Rose Doeller
my one year old (who has no clue of how to operate a camera) can take better pictures than these….
http://profile.yahoo.com/GYSB6YOPKQY6T4EN7XLN75M56M Mr Riouso
if i was the one taking mr. phelps…damn! i’ll spend a day meticulously shooting him. plus hours upon hours of post process… this is like Strobist 101!
http://www.facebook.com/BrianCareyPhotography Brian Carey
But isn’t this what pop culture is all about, bad shit!
chrisholland2
this must be a hoax… they’re terrible
Jack_AZ
It has been pointed out that the photographer in question is not a portrait photographer (viable excuse or not aside) where does the blame really belong?
The photographer for doing his best (perhaps) as one of a select few who were allowed access to the athletes?
The U.S. Olympic Committee for not carefully selecting which photographers were granted access to the athletes?
The editor at CBS for choosing these images?
Seems to me there has to be more going on here than just a bad set of images. Perhaps the photographer felt this was his big break but he had to produce something different. Perhaps (technical issues aside), these really aren’t bad images, they are just so drastically different from what we are familiar with that our instinctive reaction is to ridicule them as bad images?
Just playing devil’s advocate. There is almost always more to it than is apparent on the surface.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Danny-Raybon/1672320074 Danny Raybon
Uncle bob strikes again.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TSFHKT64ZUG3SFSVMYQRGF2HWE MARK P
actually Nastia Liukin is not going to be on the 2012 team
http://profile.yahoo.com/GKAPWBKQ67GMMECH5FDB6ETGBA Don
Wow…I guess the federal budget cuts run deeper than I though!
ryan scherding
this is the work of someone who has no experience with this sort of photography, i took a look at his work online and there are a few photos that really were pretty good. that being said he is not a portrait photographer, and might just possibly be the worst i have ever seen. but as a portrait photographer i bet if i were put behind a 600mm lens and told to shoot a sporting match i would probably suck just as hard. people hear professional and they assume you can do anything in the realm of photography, where real photographers know that you have to specialize in a particular field. i can see the thinking behind sending this guy “send a sports photographer to shoot athletes” but with his complete lack of knowledge on how light, compose, photoshop and (most importantly) direct his subjects he failed miserably. if you sent a “sports portrait” photographer like joel grimes you would get great results. this is just a side effect of the sad fact that the public thinks of all photographers as able to do all types of photography.
now with the fair part being said… i have taken better test shots where the flash didn’t fire.
https://twitter.com/#!/thelonelylights Adam Cross
these don’t look like final images to me, they look like test shots for a big composite job or something
http://www.facebook.com/hiroschneider Jaron Schneider
hahahaha
Trav Williams
I might be the first to say that some of them aren’t terrible, if taken by themselves. Many are poor, especially, as said, since they are the OLYMPIC TEAM! I rather like the tennis player, swimmer, and even the runner (where we can see the backdrop roll). But yes…that’s it. You’d think that the ripped backdrop would have, at least, been fixed in post!
JLeavitt0719
I’m an amateur photographer and I could take better shots than these. These are just awful!!
yrsued
I have shot Media Day for the Phoenix Mercury WNBA team, I had 5 minutes per player!! They liked the Images so much, that some players came back for more shots!! Lack of time is NO Excuse to do your best!!
Andrew Smith
lol Hurley will probably have a shit-fit when he sees these..
http://twitter.com/kenkyee Ken Yee
I saw a few of these on a different site and thought the lighting was terrible.
The full set is worse :-P
Shows just what kind of work magazines and Getty accept nowadays. Bet they paid $1 for them and were happy about how they got all these pics for cheapppppp :-)
p.s., give me a 600mm lens and I’d bet I can get good sports shots :-)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003563187021 Marc Edwards
Eh.. those are terrible shots… how could this be professional?
Chris Helton
MEDIA SUMMIT! I keep reading about this all over and no ones gets it. These are not picture that THIS photographer was hired to shoot. It was a media summit where the athletes answered questions and posed on makeshift backdrops for pictures by a bunch of dif photographers. There are a lot better images from this same event.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Lyanlex-Bernales/747339638 Lyan’lex Bernales
they’re bad… was he like, “why don’t you put that badminton racket up your face?”
Chris Helton
Although I do agree, whoever hired him, let him into this media event…. should be shot. Yes, he is a sports photographer, not a portrait photographer BUT have some respect for your own work man.
http://www.facebook.com/silanskas Rocky Shilly
Check your’s before that final one ;)
http://www.facebook.com/silanskas Rocky Shilly
It’s sad when it goes to business – not photography…
http://profile.yahoo.com/KJZC4HE6YWC25RMAM6EIY7BST4 stonecold
this must be a joke!…my cell phone takes better pic than these….
http://www.jerritpruyn.com Jerrit Pruyn
he is a sports photographer, and by the looks of it was his first time to use a flash :P
http://twitter.com/FatherlyFilms Eric Bindman
now he’s famous…. Now everyone wants to know who he is.. he’s a Freaking GENIUS!!!in a world where everyone seeks for the perfect pictures.. the perfect shot… he went on to show perfect athletes in a mediocre way.. just to prove a point.. : It don’t matter how nice or crappy the athletes will look.. they are still the best.. Think about it
http://twitter.com/mwesselphoto Michael Wessel
Maybe they found the photographer through Instagram?
Jon McGuffin
No, even these would be insulting to anybody with an Iphone 4s and Instagram.. absolutely horrendous….
Jim Atyeo
I thought they might be a joke as well. I saw a shot recently of Shawn Johnson the gymnast that must have been from this same group, it was terrible. It was so bad I showed my Photo 1 students and I said this proves just beacuse you have a digital camera doesn’t make you a photographer.. I have been a pro photographer and photo teacher for 25 years. When I saw these images I thought how embarrasing these must be for the Olympic committee and the athletes themselves. The lighting is absolutely hideous. Had they been a project from one of my students, they would have failed miserably.
http://www.facebook.com/ebreeve Ben Reeve
Surely Strobist 101 is better than this. Crap I am not a pro and took better portraits today.
http://www.facebook.com/ebreeve Ben Reeve
EPIC FAIL- not to mention disrespectful of the subjects.

These Photos Of The 2012 United States Olympic Team Have Hit A Nerve With The Public

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