Henri Cartier-Bresson Image Voted Off Flickr.

Back in 2006, Flickr user André Rabelo submitted the above photograph to the group pool of DeleteMe!, a group whose members vote on photos to weed out any photos that aren’t “incredible pictures, amazing, astonishing, perfect”. Sadly, the photograph was very quickly removed by popular vote. I was stunned to read about this a few days ago. Goes to show that appealing to the lowest common denominator is not the way to stand out in photography or any art form. Trust your vision. If popularity was the barometer of quality then McDonald's would be a five star restaurant and romantic comedies would win all the Oscars.
True art stands the tests of time my friends.

Here are some of the moronic critiques of the above photograph.

"When everything is blurred you cannot convey the motion of the bicyclist. On the other hand, if the bicyclist is not the subject-- what was? 


"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 [depth of field]. 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."


"It's just very awful"


"so blurry.... to better show a sense of movement SOMETHING has to be in sharp focus!"

Yup, Man Ray said it best  "All critics should be assassinated." This is precisely why I stay off forums and sites like Flickr (although I have an account). Too many morons acting like experts when they have no clue at all what they are talking about.

The above image “Hyeres, France, 1932″  was sold at auction in 2008 for a staggering $265,000. So suck it Flickr Philistines!

rant over.

Cheers!