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They could have done better.
Should have let Michelle pick the best shot.
(One good thing, tho: He doesn't really look that young anymore.)
Youre so like the lady with the mystic smile
Is it only cause youre lonely they have blamed you?
For that mona lisa strangeness in your smile?
Do you smile to tempt a lover, mona lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart?
Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep
They just lie there and they die there
Are you warm, are you real, mona lisa?
Or just a cold and lonely lovely work of art?
Imagine how his face will look 8 years from now.
"I love the moment though. It captures him at this time, a smile for his love of the country, a direct look for his honesty and integrity, a slightly furrowed brow understanding the enormity of what he faces."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/14/offici...
Because it's not McCain in this official White House photo...
I'm gonna describe this less than perfect photo as awesome.
I love it! I love it! I love it!
Wasn't so long ago that a candidate with Irish ancestry was considered to be pushing the envelope.
I am so proud of the United States for voting this wonderful man into office. I know he is going to do things to piss me off, but he brings hope after eight years of blight.
The photo can be dramatically improved by cropping out much of the background and shifting Obama slightly to the left by cropping out more of the left side than the right.
I've seen assembly-line graduation photos that looked better.
A good portrait should tell you about the subject. This says nothing.
The Obamas need to fire whoever's dressing Michelle and whoever took this picture.
I dig your comments, you ol' curmudgeon.
Of course O is placed off-center! But the crop shows too much space above his head and that diminishes him.
The portrait tells me something about the subject, which may cause me to have an erotic dream tonight about our new president.
UGH.
The picture is him. Should it be air brushed, no. A better view or different back ground, in my opinion, yes and no. Will his hair turn gray, yes.
In terms of the blue collar comment. Isn't this obvious why this is a good thing, it speaks to all of us. Most if not all middle class spring from blue collar roots, his whole campaign was based on the middle class and those others less advantaged than the more upper class (read "white collar")...do you think its an accident that Obama chose a blue collared shirt to wear for his official photo...I think not. After the discipline of his presedential campaign, I believe nothing gets by his image makers.
It was also commented that it was taken from too high of an angle...I disagree, I think it is taken from an angle that assumes that the viewer is looking at Obama from an equal perspective. This, also, supports his egalitarian, populous message. He is not above anyone else nor below, he is on equal footing as the rest of us and would like us all to look into each other from a common perspective. If the angle is any higher, then yes, he looks diminutive and not worthy of stature of the office, if too low, he fears looking as if he is presiding over the people and not with them. These are not accidents, I believe. His image makers no what they are doing and I agree with there approach. Take it from a graduate film student. This image is populous and is intended to be so.
My 2cents
;>)
OkOkOk. Your's is a great comment, so just this one time...
I don't mind the blue shirt, but it matches the wall in value. Bad, bad, bad. One or the other should have been lighter. A warmer wall color (eggshell) would be better balance for his blue suit and shirt.
I hate the flag pin!!! He has 2 flags behind them, that is enough patriotism to be displaying. The stripes and the pin pull attention from his face.
His face is the best part: steady, reassuring, direct, intelligent. It isn't charming, but it isn't confrontational, either.
I loathe the composition. The depth of field could have been better managed, the flags behind him could have been arranged, the white space is wrong, and that fuzzy stuff (fringe???) on the flag looks like a monstrous tinsel caterpillar. ;p
I'm a photographer, too. I'd NEVER have delivered something this poorly composed to a client.
Obama wears an expression of seriousness and modesty ... two things we've been missing in that job for 8 years.
http://www.obamamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads...
BTW, Obama is very fit. He can wear anything he wants and still look sharp.
Oh, I'm not fooled. He is on the verge of selling out to the rich guys, throwing in his lot with the wealthy, powerful and elite. We certainly aren't going to keep him on our side by making him our monarch, our king, our nobility and absolute ruler. I've had enough of American nobility, the generations of Kennedys, Roosevelts, Rockefellers and Bushs.
Obama in the tee-shirt sharing a moment with Sasha and Malia is the man I want as our president.
The tie is nothing special, though too-flashy a tie would not be cool for government work. It's tied fine, for pete's sake - what do you want, a superfat full Windsor to make him look like a shifty Milan trust-fund playboy?
Blue shirt better matches his skin tone, too. It doesn't look "blue collar." Blue collar folks do not wear button-down formal dress shirts to work, of blue or any other color. And last I checked, you can wear a shirt other than white with a suit. Personally I hate white shirts (white clothes of any type) so I'm glad to see the man in something showing a bit of color and originality. Presidents (or lawyers, doctors, professionals of any type) do not have to dress like Agents from the Matrix, folks.
Now, the cropping, that sucks butt. Chop off half his body to get a flag in the corner? makes no sense.
But please, all you fashion-diva whiners, remember - this is a GOVERNMENT PORTRAIT. It's meant to hang on the walls of post offices and IRS branch offices, above twenty-year-old filing cabinets and under fluorescent light. We've already got Shepard Fairey's supercool portrait in the National Gallery. Not to mention fifty gazillion t-shirts and commemorative plates and hoo-hah. This is not the one to have Annie Liebowitz do, OK?
So please calm down already and accept the comforting, bland artistic mediocrity of the Federal Government as it should be.
PANKAJ SHARMA
AN INDIAN,A MEMBER OF HAPPY UNIVERSE
His actions, not some stylized image, are what will move this country. Image is nothing, as we've learned in the last 8 years. The eyes are what draw you in this picture, they're focused in a benevolent smile. It's HIM, not the accoutrements.
Works for me.
Besides, I am fortunate in that although a well paid professional I do not have to wear a tie or suit every day. I do not need the traditional rig to be impressed.
I guess that's too much to ask, but that's my one beef.
FYI: In support of Obama's call for the "National Day of Service" on January 19, 2009, which also commemorates Martin Luther King Day, Inner Sight Radio will feature special talks on the theme of service throughout the week beginning Monday January 19 through Friday January 23. Join us in recognizing and supporting this day by listening to the following segments as well as radiating light, love and the will-to-good into the hearts and minds of humanity.
Monday, January 19
4 PM EST Service: A Law of the Soul
Tuesday, January 20
4 PM EST The Value of Service
Wednesday, January 21
4 PM EST Service and the Soul
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4 PM EST Serving with Goodwill
Friday, January 23
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In lighted service,
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http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Inner-Sight-Radio/...
Is it a man with a made up face dressed in pressed blue jeans who is trying to pose in front of brush that supposedly he likes to remove? Or is it a man whose rugged and heavy set features push together in an odd way to remind you of a man who either just killed someone or had an accident in his pants?
I truly don't know, so with those guidelines in place, I would like to think that Obama may hopefully break the mold at long last. Let us all pray that looking Presidential just may have a different aura these next 8 years.
As someone said, good enough for government work.
Not disagreeing that there have been hundreds of better photos of Obama; just that for the purpose of this photo average/ordinary is good.
Those pics are ALL about the face. Noone cares about the clothes, or even pays attention to them, I think. It's about "this is our president".
I'm thrilled just to go down to the courthouse again next week and see this on the wall. I'll take the blue shirt.
The shooting from above idea? Maybe a subconcious reference to looking at things from new perspectives? Anyways, I like it.
I met him, y'know...it's a great story.
At his level everyone knows who he is and what he does, he doesn't need to
advertise anything.
What can I say, I'm a seamstress. I notice these things.
I hope his next portrait is more meticulously crafted.
This fellow-photographer thinks your assessment is right on.
But I think it's probably deliberate to try to 'bring his image down' to the level of every day people. He'll always be percieved as larger than life and as a celebrity. This I think helps people relate more to him as a basic person. Probably the same approach used in his odd camera angle in his you tube address.
Sometimes I just don't know what to make of this country. Electing Bush (or giving him numbers large enough to steal an election) twice was criminally stupid and stupider.
Then they go ahead and elect this man.
I literally can't wrap my mind around those two last paragraphs.
I just hope it isn't this country's swan song.
Isn't that the significance of Obama, the Black man, becoming our first president? Not who Obama, himself, is, but rather than he is every man, the common American, and that the American dream remains true, that everyone, Black, white, brown, yellow or red, man, woman, all are Americans and the presidency belongs to all of us. If that isn't true, then maybe yes, portray him in a crown, purple robes, jeweled scepter on a throne of gold with his feet on the heads on his subjects.
No, I'm not going to go off on that tangent again, except to reinforce the points. No presidential campaign in modern times has paid attention to and controlled imagery like Barack Obama's. They presented absolutely superb skill at image messaging, about as good & effective as Hitler's in fact -- and no I'm not drawing any other inference.
These folks don't do things by accident. They do them for a specific purpose and they are sharp, sharp, sharp message deliverers.
Rick Warren was chosen intentionally for a very specific reason. And this photograph was taken and released this way intentionally for a very specific reason.
Some of the comments provide good clues about the reason, I think, but no freaking way was this accidental. It is a pedestrian photograph ON PURPOSE.