The SI Swimsuit issue is hitting the news stands tomorrow. I jokingly commented that if you put all of their past swimsuit photos together you can make a flip-book of "The History of Bad Over-Photoshopping."
But honestly, it goes beyond that. It is bad photography, period. Yes, yes... from a technical aspect I'm sure these photographers using $10,000 cameras and enough lighting to bring Niagara Falls Hydro-Electric to a grinding halt are technically taking good photographs.
To me though these photos fall way short for such a wealthy and professional publication. There is a serious lack of style and artistry to these pictures. And then they Photoshop out any traces of humanity from the photos before publishing the end results. I'm sure some editor somewhere looks at them and in a very pompous way considers them to be masterpieces, but for the love of all that is good in this world, why does the popular media feel the need to make models plastic? Look at these examples:
Alex Morgan of the US Women's Soccer team. She also played for the WNY Flash in the Women's Professional Soccer League, so I've actually seen her in person. Trust me, she doesn't need to be Photoshopped into a Barbie doll's plastic perfection. They have done their best to remove any sense of texture. I don't know about you, but to me part of what makes a person interesting and alluring is their individual and personal features; the textures, the flaws and seeing them just being themselves.
This is posed and brutally unflattering.
Natalie Coughlin, a US Olympic Swimmer. This one is even worse. At least Alex's can almost pass as a natural smile, but this pose looks so forced and unnatural, it almost looks like she's actually in pain. Again, over-photoshopping has been employed to not only strip down her features into a flawless, plastic surface, but her "body paint" doesn't even look like it is on her body! She looks like a paper-doll with a clip-on swimsuit.
These are ridiculous and extreme examples. When will magazines like SI learn that these women don't need to look plastic and unreal to be beautiful?
SO often S-I disappoints me. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen some amazingly sexy photographs in their magazines but I wonder if they are really losing their edge.
These two women are fighting tooth and nail to remain sexy in spite of all the horrible work done by the MUA team, photographer, and post production goons.
I understand that they want to take sports women out of their element, but I think they missed a mark when they decided to paint boring bikini designs on them and have them stand in a studio in front of a terrible background. These look like test shots!
What senior portrait photographer did they borrow all of this from???
As a photographer, I couldn’t agree more. You can find other modeling shots both of these women have done that are classy, edgy, interesting… these shots… the promise of seeing these women in body paint and nothing else will bring men to the news stands in droves, but the photos themselves… well, they suck. Flat out suck. There is nothing interesting or even classy about them except they did their best to photoshop out all traces of nipple.
That isn’t classy. That is disappointing.