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#4403 – henri cartier-bresson is a hack, apparently

This was posted over 19 years ago; my opinions, thoughts, attitude, and writing style may have evolved since then, and this post might have been different if it were to be posted today.

on flickr there are these groups called things like “saveme” or “deleteme” where people post a photo, and other people in the group reply with “saveme” or “deleteme” and reasons why they like or don’t like it. usually once a photo gets to a certain number of “saves” or “deletes” then it’s saved in or deleted from the photo pool.

well, someone apparently submitted a henri cartier-bresson photo to the pool without saying who took it… and the photo ended up being deleted!

Mario’s Bike

  • “When everything is blurred you cannot convey the motion of the bicyclist.”
  • “…is everything meant to be moving in this shot, all seems blurred”
  • “Why is the staircase so “soft”? Camera shake?”
  • “so blurry… to better show a sense of movement SOMETHING has to be in sharp focus”
  • “This looks contrived, which is not a bad thing. If this is a planned shot, it just didn’t come out right. If you can round up Mario, I would do it again. This time put the camera on a tripod and use the smallest aperture possible to get the best DoF. What I would hope for is that the railings are sharp and that mario on the bike shows a blur. Must have the foreground sharp, though. Without that, the image will never fly.”
  • “bit too blurred to be worth a save from me”

    cartier-bresson is “only” one of the most famous and talented photographers ever, and he was all about the “decisive moment” which is why all these comments on why the photo is crap are hilarious…

    “RIP Henri… next time use a tripod… bahahahhaaa”