Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: drmike on April 03, 2016, 07:10:12 am
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Any UK members seen the the Celine advert on the back page of Saturday's Guardian? It's this image. Advert (http://www.designscene.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Celine-Spring-Summer-2016-Juergen-Teller-02-620x930.jpg)
Is this a deliberate mistake as I notice other images they use display appalling Photoshop techniques. Can't see why they'd do it.
Mike
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It is poorly done....reminds me of my own attempts.
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I can only imagine it's deliberate.
More (http://www.designscene.net/2016/01/celine-spring-summer-2016.html)
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The problem is a lot of people will think it is incompetence and it will turn them off? More to lose than gain?
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I suspect 99% of people won't notice - my wife didn't but once pointed out ...
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I can only imagine it's deliberate.
More (http://www.designscene.net/2016/01/celine-spring-summer-2016.html)
Maybe, but it looks really bad, cheap
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Bad photoshop skillz have been hip for some time. Juergen is coming late to this one. But I like it.
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That leaves me puzzled. How can something sloppy in a non obvious manner be a positive and (no offence meant) how can it be liked?
I can understand how grainy, gritty effects can be appealing but what looks like simply sloppy work - I'm struggling.
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It's like the typo in the title of this thread. Some won't notice it, some will think it's a lazy mistake, and others will think it's a knowing reference to The Guardian's history.
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Lazy persistent mistake. I always spell it that way and have it on auto correct when I can. Even when I concentrate 50% of the time it's wrong (I just did it there). I wish I knew why and how to stop doing it.
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If you like grit/grain then this is a similar thing; a reference to the means of production.
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teh: It's the same problem as I have: dyslexic fingers.
It gets worse as the years pass. It's got nothing to do with the ability to read - all to do with the finger/eye coordination going walkies. I suppose that a trained, touch-typist never suffers these ills.
;-(
Rob C
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Mike, have you ever heard the phrase "It's so bad, it's good." ? :)
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It's like the typo in the title of this thread. Some won't notice it, some will think it's a lazy mistake, and others will think it's a knowing reference to The Guardian's history.
The Grauniad, as it was often known.
Jeremy
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I can only imagine it's deliberate.
I cannot imagine it's deliberate, it's consistently incompetent though.
It also screams TOO CHEAP TO BOTHER about the quality we offer
Cheers,
Bart
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Come on guys, it screams "deliberate." And it is brilliant as a marketing idea.
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Come on guys, it screams "deliberate." And it is brilliant as a marketing idea.
Hi Slobodan,
After I had a look at their website, I think you may be right that it is a Campaign look. Afterall, it's hard to be so consistently incompetent. But I fail to see how this is brilliant. Those who fail to notice it still get the subliminal message of CHEAP, others will wonder what the message is that they are sending, other than CHEAP, instead of quality design which is what I assume they want to be known for.
Cheers,
Bart
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To point is to get it noticed.
As Mike's wife proves, people (non-photographers) are so accustomed to expect a certain look (perfection?) that they do not bother to devote it more than a few milliseconds. So you have to hit them with something unexpected, like those cutouts, fake Photoshop fails, in order to have them look twice - that intention is brilliant. At this point, most people are aware of Photoshop and especially how it is (mis)used in fashion, so they see it as a deliberate design choice, a humorous nod to the usual Photoshop fails. Fashion is always looking for new ways to present things, to surprise you, to make you look twice.
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But my wife didn't notice (and bear in mind she's married to me and is aware of Photoshop) and hence any clever marketing was wasted but she is not the target audience. I guess the generation it is aimed at will be more savvy and notice quicker - and they won't think sloppy.
That said I wouldn't want my products associated with sloppy looking standards unless it truly is so bad it's good because it generates a response. But I'm not the target generation.
Mike
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teh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teh)
God help us all! Makes sense of the advert, though.
Rob
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Well I couldn't read all that - mine is a simply typo made almost all the time (hah had to correct that one even though I was concentrating!)
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To point is to get it noticed.
Exactly. It will probably be a roaring success.
In fact I have a vague memory of a "clumsy collage" look being trendy once, long ago, before PS.
Or think South Park.
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I do not know the timing of the campaign, or the stages (if any) it was introduced, but the following thought occurred to me:
Given that, presented as a series, it clearly (for most of us) indicates a deliberate attempt, I wouldn't start with the simultaneous launching of all the photos, but just with the first one. Then wait for the Internet's sharp eyes to virally spread it as a Photoshop fail. Guerrilla marketing at its best. Nothing works like million clicks on the fake "fail." Then you hit them with the rest of the campaign.
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IMO the ad is clearly using a style on purpose. (I also thought Mike was using teh ironically 'til I started reading.) I don't see it as sloppy at all…it's just a particular effect employed to a particular end. The point is to catch your eye and maybe grab your attention. Marketing.
-Dave-
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I'd say it's meant to look like a clipping, cut out with scissors and pasted on a page.
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Celine seems to be a fashion house clothing, handbags, etc. The odds of this being a mistake are very long, I'd guess.
A bunch of photo geeks, whose daily concerns are whether a new 60 mp digicam has enough dynamic range for a photo they may never take, is not the target market of the ad. The fact that we don't get it may be exactly what they were hoping. The obvious scissors cut-and-paste look must be to attract someone's attention if that isn't stating the obvious since it's an ad, maybe using irony to do so. It would be interesting to hear what the designers' concept was.
It's interesting to me that the "cut" part, the model with handbag, probably had each of its pixels photoshopped to within an inch of their lives by experts, but was then crudely "pasted" onto a background in the most amateurish way. Fashion photography has never really been documentary, someone is trying to create some new myth here, maybe.
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Am I the only one to like this and find it funny? Her expression and pose, the ridiculous lump of stone, the way they've left white areas inside her earrings and arm. It's anti- Vogue for the Instagram crowd.
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Celine seems to be a fashion house clothing, handbags, etc. The odds of this being a mistake are very long, I'd guess.
A bunch of photo geeks, whose daily concerns are whether a new 60 mp digicam has enough dynamic range for a photo they may never take, is not the target market of the ad.
+1
In fact, +100.
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I think that it's intended to be seen like a collage (first level reading), or like a photoshopped image that imitates a collage (second level reading). I would like it very much if it were a real photograph of a real collage that imitates a photoshopped image that imitates a real collage.
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Coldly, dispassionately, it's plain ugly, and nothing more.
The rest, as witnessed here on the forum, is just snappers rationalising and having fun. So at least it works on that level.
Rob C
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Come on guys, it screams "deliberate." And it is brilliant as a marketing idea.
And it got us all to look carefully at the image and discuss it at length. Mission accomplished.
Reminds me of that ugly trend in fashion photography lighting from a few years ago where they blasted the models from directly beside the lens. Yukh.
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And it got us all to look carefully at the image and discuss it at length. Mission accomplished.
Reminds me of that ugly trend in fashion photography lighting from a few years ago where they blasted the models from directly beside the lens. Yukh.
Not really: nobody seems to be buying anything. On that criterion - abject failure.
Rob C
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I would like it very much if it were a real photograph of a real collage that imitates a photoshopped image that imitates a real collage.
:D
A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.
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:D
A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.
Graham, would you be kind enough to fill me in as to who shot them? A visual link would be very interesting! I spent many years there.
Ta -
Rob
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Géraldine Lay. The expo is profiled here, although the couple of images they show are not really representative :
http://contemporaneitesdelart.fr/exposition-north-end-geraldine-lay-a-galerie-reverbere-lyon/
This is a bit more like it:
http://www.franceinter.fr/sites/default/files/imagecache/scald_image_max_size/2016/01/20/1224585/images/geralmdine-lay.jpg
These are more what I was thinking of, but it looks like they taken in various English cities :
http://www.telerama.fr/scenes/north-end,138636.php
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:D
A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.
If I understand your follow up comment correctly the last link is an example of what you refer to above?
I'm not sure what your point is. They are a mixed bag of photographs, some work for me and some do not but it seems to me the photographer is always striving to create something from what is before her. Some seem clearly well composed while others to me seem to lack any merit such as the young man in front of a church with his mobile (if I recall it correctly). But as a body of work I'd say you can't just dismiss it as thoughtless photography.
However, I fully accept I have probably misunderstood your comment!
Mike
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My memory of the exhibition was that there was a lot of the type you describe as lacking merit: the links are rather the "best of". So I may have a rather jaundiced view after banging my head on the low rafters of the gallery mezzanine and seeing a lot of very ordinary photos asking 1200€ each. "Thoughtless" may be the wrong adjective, but I failed to see the sense of striving you mention. Purely subjective opinions of course.
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That's it though - it's all subjective really. I think the lady you linked to is striving but not always winning. The shot of the mattress suggests she thinks about composition and the rather muddled shot of street lamp and wall, again I'd say she was striving there. I'd go to a local exhibition by her.
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"Géraldine Lay a par ailleurs l'audace de se confronter à la photographie de rue, catégorie reine de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Peu de professionnels osent encore s'y frotter. Que peut-on raconter après Robert Frank, William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Daido Moriyama... ? Géraldine Lay trouve son chemin. Elle raconte notre monde contemporain à travers la solitude des gens. Lorsque le masque tombe, ils se découvrent déboussolés par les violentes mutations économiques et sociales. Ça, ce n'est pas du cinéma."
And that's the problem: there ain't nuttin' photographically to add, today, that ain't usually already been said ad nauseam.
Throwing in famous names doesn't change the actual work one iota - simply makes it seem absurd to anyone familiar with the work of the old guys.
The mention of Crewdson and Hopper in another write-up is simply more of the same hype.
It's really just the 'noods' dilemma all over again. How surprising (or is it?) that grants get awarded to go shoot this stuff.
Rob
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Are you saying there's nothing new under the sun? That's true everything has been done before but not the way each of us does it - by and large. I saw the nudes discussion and I don't agree with what I think you and others were saying. Sure 'artistic' nudes in dereliction and wilderness have been done ad nauseam until suddenly you see a great one. Nudes (for example not that I'm fixated in any way, not me) in the studio - hell they've been done to death until you see Michael's levitating models which personally I find wonderfully well executed and composed etc.
I agree naming names is silly and pointless, you do what you do and if pressed indicate the shoulders you try to stand on. But that's surely no reason not to do it. Surest way not to succeed is to not try.
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Are you saying there's nothing new under the sun? That's true everything has been done before but not the way each of us does it - by and large. I saw the nudes discussion and I don't agree with what I think you and others were saying. Sure 'artistic' nudes in dereliction and wilderness have been done ad nauseam until suddenly you see a great one. Nudes (for example not that I'm fixated in any way, not me) in the studio - hell they've been done to death until you see Michael's levitating models which personally I find wonderfully well executed and composed etc.
I agree naming names is silly and pointless, you do what you do and if pressed indicate the shoulders you try to stand on. But that's surely no reason not to do it. Surest way not to succeed is to not try.
"Are you saying there's nothing new under the sun?"
Indeed, and doing it totally for yourself is fine.
The problem arises when you decide to put it 'out there' and seek 'critique' (another of those dreadful concepts I hate) and end up having either to accept you ain't done much or, worse, feel obliged to defend your unremarkable children. That's the main driver for having set up Without Prejudice: it gives one a tiny window box and no expectation of others offering unwanted advice. If one wants that advice, the rest of the space provides for it, as you know.
However, that different people hold different views is normal, and nothing wrong with that. I simply have mine, and as a life-long pro, perhaps draw upon a deeper well.
Rob
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I'm not sure about this - Geraldine is promoting herself as an artist I think, not a pro. I'm sure she needs to get commissions from individuals or grants in order to live and as such I'm sure she aspires to be a professional artist who happens to use photography as her medium.
I just wrote a whole load of crap which is below which I think brilliantly missed the point you were making about without prejudice and critique. I think we do disagree on some points, but cordially, while agreeing on others.
I know I lack the talent, the drive, the business acumen and the persona to be a pro as you were, I also lack the inclination :) I can usually earn enough for me more easily in different ways and I have the joy of producing what I do for me. I also enjoy sharing with others who generally can't understand why I'm so happy about what I have created which is fine too.
I like it when people suggest how I could improve (if that's the right word) what I have done and so I welcome critique, robust critique. Of course I'm not obliged to agree and what one says about the work of others reveals as much about yourself as exhibiting your own work. I see nothing negative in real analysis of someone else's work and making suggestions on that basis. What I find harder to accept is simple - great shot, [Insert name of famous photographer] could do no better when it's plainly not the case.
I think I have wandered away from the point and we do clearly disagree on a number of areas which is no bad thing :)
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I'm not sure about this - Geraldine is promoting herself as an artist I think, not a pro. I'm sure she needs to get commissions from individuals or grants in order to live and as such I'm sure she aspires to be a professional artist who happens to use photography as her medium.
I just wrote a whole load of crap which is below which I think brilliantly missed the point you were making about without prejudice and critique. I think we do disagree on some points, but cordially, while agreeing on others.
I know I lack the talent, the drive, the business acumen and the persona to be a pro as you were, I also lack the inclination :) I can usually earn enough for me more easily in different ways and I have the joy of producing what I do for me. I also enjoy sharing with others who generally can't understand why I'm so happy about what I have created which is fine too.
I like it when people suggest how I could improve (if that's the right word) what I have done and so I welcome critique, robust critique. Of course I'm not obliged to agree and what one says about the work of others reveals as much about yourself as exhibiting your own work. I see nothing negative in real analysis of someone else's work and making suggestions on that basis. What I find harder to accept is simple - great shot, [Insert name of famous photographer] could do no better when it's plainly not the case.
I think I have wandered away from the point and we do clearly disagree on a number of areas which is no bad thing :)
Not sure if I misled you or not: the point of mentioning being a life-long pro and having a deeper well from which to draw (perhaps) is that I have had more time to dwell on the subject of photography and look at thousands of great images others have produced over the decades.
;-)
Rob
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:)