Why good underwater photographers starve

:: Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 @ 9:52:18 pm

:: Tags: Photo

Citi advertisement at the Dallas airport

Every time I walk by this advertisement in the Dallas airport, I get angry. I’m sure Citi is a company with a huge marketing budget, and yet, they managed to purchase the rights to the worst underwater photograph ever for an ad that is supposed to make people want to fly to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Argh.

I guess it’s better to be a good businessman than it is to be a good photographer, eh?

| Popularity: 2% | San Diego, CA | link | trackback | Aug 23, 2007 21:52:18

:: 6 comments (rss)

1. posted by kennyliu on Thu, August 23, 2007 @ 11:03 pm

   maybe it was taken with a really nice camera, perhaps one that cost a lot of money.

2. posted by Jean on Fri, August 24, 2007 @ 6:35 pm

   Care to tell us what you find so bad about it? Seeing it does get me in the mood to book a trip to Cozumel, so the picture serves its purpose, for me anyway.

   But I’m not an underwater photographer…

3. posted by echeng on Fri, August 24, 2007 @ 6:43 pm

   Here are some reasons: poor main subject (reef + fish), dark/dull reef with no color (not lit properly), bubbles all over the place, divers poorly positioned and are in an in-between state (between being lit and silhouetted).

   It is appropriate only if they are trying to show that any old schmuck can go down there and snap a shot — because this is the sort of shot a first-timer gets.

   I hate the image.

   But it must do its job fine. Most people (apparently) can’t tell, anyway!

4. posted by tanthalas on Sat, August 25, 2007 @ 12:17 pm

   Yeah, it’s unfortunate but I have to admit that I couldn’t exactly tell what was wrong with the picture either. In fact, without reading your complaint about how bad it was, I thought it was a matter of “They’re stealing our shots!”

   FWIW, when I realized that I was supposed to be looking for the bad in the picture, I did notice that it didn’t look as “nice” as a lot of your shots, but couldn’t describe how or why. But I guess you took care of that - thanks for the lesson in underwater photography. :D

5. posted by Josh Krancer on Wed, August 29, 2007 @ 4:47 pm

   Looks like Citi is confusing the West Indies with the Indo-Pacific region. Did anybody notice that? I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Indo-Pacific reefs used to illustrate ads for Caribbean travel.

6. posted by echeng on Wed, August 29, 2007 @ 5:04 pm

   I’ve got a ton of crappy Indo-Pacific photos. I wonder if they’d buy one of mine. :)

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