Give Me A V


v

V…  For very bad…

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17 Comments

  1. Plonker

    Everything that occurs to me for this picture, would get me banned from the site. That’s not the sign of a good photo.

  2. Nice idea poorly executed. Please, please and please pay attention to the background. I know you photographers think we’ll be looking at the model (yeah we are) but we also get distracted posters, drinks left on tables and the rest of the room in general when all we want to see is the model on the table. And the slight white vignette does not help. So, c’mon people, what do I always say? Yep, feel sorry for the rocking model. To take this lady and turn the photo into “meh” is a real shame.

    • Plonker

      Honestly it’s not the background that distracted me, it was that her thighs look relatively fat in this picture. When I see a subject with fat thighs and high heels, I often think of a pig. I don’t mean this unkindly, but rather as a frank critique.

      The subject seems very pretty – I’m sure there could have been a more flattering pose, even if the photographer had to choose only from over-the-top provocative poses.

      • Just so long as when you call a lady a pig you are not being unkind, I guess it is OK.

      • Plonker

        @Thomas: The frank feedback is an investment in minimizing subjects’ embarrassment. What’s better: for one person to say that this kind of pose makes me think of pigs, or for me not to, but for 1000 men to think the same thing in future photos?

      • Grackle

        Thank goodness you focus on what 1000 MEN think, you dope; everybody knows that theirs are the only opinions that matter.

  3. Very unflattering pose. Lots of things wrong with this one.

  4. Fauxtog: “I shall call this…V for vignetta!”

  5. Plonker

    “Thank goodness you focus on what 1000 MEN think, you dope; everybody knows that theirs are the only opinions that matter.”

    It was silly of me to point out that 48% of the picture’s potential viewers might have such an unflattering take on the photo. I really should have just stayed silent and not warned any other photographers of this consideration. I should have let who knows how many innocent models be made to look foolish and unattractive. That’s why we get model release signatures before the shoot, amiright?

    Or perhaps your point is that despite men making up about 48% of the population, their opinion of a photo like this is unworthy of consideration? If so, you should be embarrassed by your blatant misandry. You should strive to at least try to hide your sexist opinion of male viewpoints.

    Or perhaps your point is that women were the primary audience for this photo, and so men’s opinions are irrelevant? If that’s the case, I apologize. I seem to have deeply misunderstood the intent of this photo. It’s clearly a study about how the checker pattern on her dress dose or doesn’t work with the colors of the pool balls.

  6. Sorry, but I agree with Plonker, not that she looks like a pig, but this pose makes her look horrible. She does have heavy legs and she looks like she’s spreading her legs for whoever happens to come along. This is bad on so many levels. She’s an attractive woman an with the right pose she could have looked sexy and sassy, this just makes her look fat and slutty.

  7. Victoria

    Plonker, her legs are “relatively fat” according to who? Does she look like she’s ashamed of her legs? Beauty does not have just one definition, and I would think as a photographer you would already know this. I agree it’s a strange pose but her size does not even come into it at all. The fact that it does for you says a lot about you… when you hear calls for the media to stop putting forward one idea of beauty because it’s hurting young women/causing eating disorders, etc, they are talking to photographers like YOU, among others. But I feel like this comment is going to be lost on you, somehow. PS- 48 % of the photo’s potential viewers (men) just might actually have a great opinion of this photo, or have you polled them already before making your silly comment?

    • Plonker

      Victoria, her legs struck me as looking fat and unattractive in that shot. I’m a male. That’s a data point, and one which I was conveying in my post. Whether or not my view is representative of a sizable fraction of the target audience is a reasonable topic of debate.

      If you read the discussion carefully, you’ll notice that I never claimed all audience members would find the post unflattering. I said I did, and I said why. That is entirely appropriate for this kind of forum. Without frank and honest discussion about our responses to the photos being discussed, we’ll simply end up with “motel art” (to quote The Office).

      From the tone of your post, I suspect the real problem your real problem isn’t with my post. Rather, I think your problem beef is with the reality that many men find plumpness to be unattractive, and that’s a hard goal for most women to attain. You see that such a standard is instrumental in the development of eating disorders and confidence issues, and wish it weren’t so.

      It’s fine if you want that to be your crusade. Feel free to argue that glorifying trim women’s physiques is a bad idea and our society’s photographers should not produce such photos.

      But you’re not doing that. You’re trying to delegitimize my views simply because they’re not your own. You’re saying that I’m not allowed to speak because you don’t like my squarely masculine opinion. That’s misandry and sexism. It has no place here or in any civil discourse.

      • Lillian

        I was wondering when you’d trot out the “misandry” word, Plonker, but when you didn’t immediately do it after the first criticism, I began to think that perhaps I’d totally misread and unfairly labeled you in my mind as an MRA when, in fact, you might just be a clueless guy who genuinely didn’t know he was being offensive.

        Thanks for proving my original instincts correct. It’s nice to know I can trust my first impressions and spot your ilk that quickly.

  8. Terrible photo. No need to critique it because this type of photographer will never accept the feedback, even if it was offered with a cash incentive. They think their work is amazing, likely reinforced by dozens of their naive (or far too nice) Facebook friends. They’re so accustomed to getting “great shot”, “so good”, “wonderful”, they will refuse to change and continue the endless circle of garbage.

  9. I know this beautiful girl! I don’t think she is going to be very impressed to be featured or by all these comments regarding her body

  10. I really think this image should be removed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  11. There’s a lot going on in this photo… the background, the terrible vignette, unflattering pose for the model. I agree with the caption V for very bad.

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