a preponderance of today’s mobile phones possessing cameras of decent resolution, and the addition of multiple smart phone picture pre- and post-processing applications, has given rise to a flood of accidentally good and phenominally bad digital pictures. due to the ease and convenience of online photo albums, people are sharing these pictures with everyone.

we love pictures. we love looking at them, taking them, and showing them off. we think that some of them are even pretty decent.

we also love critiquing them. we were recently purusing the hipstamatic group on flikr, a group for folks who’ve taken photos with the hipstamatic iphone app, and decided to do a little piece on what we think makes a picture good or bad.

bad – untitled[coffee], by richelortiz

this photo was very poorly composed, the coffee cup’s placement and angle seemingly chosen at random. given the slanted angles of the table edges, a vertically aligned coffee mug would have looked better. this photo was also hampered by the iphone camera’s lack of optical focus, resulting in no depth of field, nothing to draw the eye to the intended subject matter. everyting appears to be at the same depth, making the photo look crowded. the sepia color tones and lack of contrast make the photo look muddled and give no distinction to the coffee mug.

good – milan, by pebblebytheriver

we love the composition of this photo. the right side placement of the coffee cup and saucer juxtaposes nicely with the right side light source and left side shadows. in addition, placing the subject slightly above center, with a somewhat top facing view gives the photo great depth and dimension. the stark contrast and washed out colors work well with the the photo’s color pallette.

bad – sandwich, by MrHispta

while the composition, depth of field, and high contrast with washed out colors are all appealing, it should go without saying that the subject of the photo should be interesting as well. one could apply as many artsy filters to a photo as one pleases. however, doing so to a uninteresting photo will usually only result in an uninteresting artsy photo. the subject of this photo is not interesting. there, we said it.

good – chalk, by hipstamatized

the upward angle of the subject in this photo, along with the off centered placement of the subject gives the photo a feeling of hopefullness and whimsy. while also sepia toned, there is much greater contrast. The vignette style and high contrast give the photo a more dramatic appeal, clearly highlighting the subject.

bad – 15/365[friends], by maxwilliamson

so much for subtely. if this photo had actually been taken with a leaky, plastic camera like the histamatic 100, it likely would’ve been discarded. there is too little detail, as the photo is too dark and too grainy for any detail to be seen. everything from the composition of the subjects to their facial expressions is lost to the poor resolution of the image. this is a good example of a photo with too many digital effects applied to it.

good – scratch, by hipstamatized

as opposed the previous photo, this image retains enough detail to provide some interest to the viewer. while still very grainy and unfocused, there is enough light and contrast to view the bemused expression of the subject. the grain, washed out colors, blurred focus and scratches all combine to give the photo a dreamy quality, almost as if the image of the subject were superimposed over a pastoral landscape. while there certainly have been many effects applied to this image, the result is a much more subtle and appealing photo.

the beauty of the hisptamatic was that one would never know what photos would turn out to be beautiful; most, in fact, didn’t. while this is the case with all most film cameras, the hisptamatic had so many other variables involved that the ultimately beauty of the photo had a lot to do with luck. digital cameras and digital post processing applications take some of the randomness out of the picture, so to speak. the fact remains, though, that a bad picture is still a bad picture.

don’t let the risk of failing to produce a work of art deter you from trying, though. even the best artists often produce many more failures than they do successes; take it from us, we know. so go ahead and try. just be a little choosy about what you post online.

It’s tempting to imagine that [you] could be forceful and self-confident without being arrogant or jerky, but that’s a false hope, because it’s other people who get to decide when they think you’re a jerk, and trying to stay under that threshold means giving those people veto power over your actions. To put yourself forward as someone good enough to do interesting things is, by definition, to expose yourself to all kinds of negative judgments, and as far as I can tell, the fact that other people get to decide what they think of your behavior leaves only two strategies for not suffering from those judgments: not doing anything, or not caring about the reaction.

Not caring works surprisingly well."

above is a quote from a clay shirky blog post in which he admittedly rants about the differences in professional risk taking between the genders. over the ensuing months since it was first posted, we’ve seen this particular quote applied to everything from one’s internet presence to one’s style of dress.

the elequence with which he states his idea is breathtaking, and reminds us of how, in a business such as marketing or design where what others think can mean everything, it’s still the risk takers that come out ahead. how better to differentiate one’s self or one’s product than to risk the very judgement that one is trying to avoid?

we can think of a few examples of marketing campaigns that changed things. the long running absolut art campaign, created in the early 1980′s by advertising agency tbwa, features the distictive shape of the absolut vodka bottle as depicted by myriad artists over the years. while there has long been an art aesthetic in advertising, this series of ads crossed the line into advertising as art.

apple ran a groundbreaking commercial for the macintosh computer during the 1984 superbowl that didn’t feature an image of the product at all, instead depicting a scene reminiscent of George Orwell’s book 1984. this commerical has been spoofed many times since then, including a politcal ad ran during the 2008 presidential campaign showing hilary rodham clinton as the big brother character.

more recently, in a 2007 guerilla ad campaign for the cartoon network show aqua teen hunger force, light boxes depicting several of the show’s characters were placed in inconspicuous outdoor areas in citys around the country. officials in boston, unaware of the campaign, reacted to the light boxes as if they were part of an apparent attack, calling in bomb squads, closing streets and bridges, and ultimately arresting two of the individuals responsible for placing the light boxes in the first place. while the resulting publicity was likely unintended, it was publicity nonetheless. and we know what they say about bad publicity.

while these examples hardly scratch the surface of the development of modern advertising, they do show that, while abandoning the traditional format or media for advertising a product can be risky, the payoff can certainly be worth that risk.