Is it art? (Part 2...Olympic Pictures AKA What were they thinking?)

[jammindude]

When people call me critical of certain kinds of music, I often get criticized.    "What makes your opinion better than mine?"   My answer....STANDARDS.   

Photographers are in an UPROAR because of the official shots of the US Olympic team because they look like they were taken by a 5 year old...and they are right.   You can't just give a camera to some shmuck and say that just because he can push the button on the camera....he's a photographer.   

There are some lines of thought that he did this intentionally to give it that "unprofessional look"...but these pictures are seriously just *bad*....   They are the "We Built This City" of the photography world. 

But judge for yourself.   Should they have gotten a actual photographer instead of some hack?   Or do you defend these pictures as being every bit as legitimate as a professional photographer?

Link is here:
https://www.petapixel.com/2012/07/01/us-olympic-team-portraits-come-under-scrutiny/

[BlobVanDam]

Looking at these, they don't look like they were going for this as an intentional "style", because it's just not that strong. They just look like amateur photographs. A couple of them make it look like it was intentional, but for the most part it looks like an amateur photographer is trying out their new camera.

Skimming the pics, some are way underexposed, some are overexposed, there's no fill lighting, the lighting is often coming from random directions with no regard to lighting the subject in a pleasing way, and the composition is just all over the place in terms of what they're trying to draw your eye to.

I'm not convinced this style was intentional. And if it was intentional, then it still breaks so many rules of creating a pleasing image, that it's still not justified.

[jammindude]

I could not agree more.   So...I'm using these pictures as my "Exhibit A" from now on when I defend my criticism of some really, really bad pop music.  (not *all* pop music, just certain things that are as obviously bad as these pictures are)

[LieLowTheWantedMan]

The only one that seems to bother me is the second one. Don't know why. I'm not exactly a photography expert though so I don't know.

EDIT: Oh nevermind there's more.

[Scorpion]

The lighting is probably the biggest issue for me, which makes the photos kinda meh. I don't really see other problems, but then I'm known to be notoriously uncritical about stuff like that - as long as a phote isn't blurry or something, I'm generally fine with it.