UPDATE: Joe has responded after the images went viral:

“I was under the impression that I was going to be photographing athletes on a stage or during press conference where I would take their headshots for our archives,” he explained. “I really had no idea that there would be a possibility for setting up a studio.” It was the first time AFP had been invited to participate in the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Media Summit, which was held this year, in May, at a Hilton Hotel in Dallas.

I work for a news agency and I wasn’t taking pictures for a Nike ad.”

Original Post:

People are not happy (per the comments below) about the quality of the photographs by photographer Joe Klamar at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Media Summit in Dallas, Texas. The complaints came as a whole, but primarily from photographers, who claim that these photographs do not represent the upcoming U.S. Olympic team very well. 

The U.S. Olympic C.M.S. invited photographers to take pictures of our country’s best athletes. 

What are your thoughts on the photographs? Are people over reacting or or do you feel they could have been done better? Keep in mind that the media during these events do not have much time for setup and execution. You can check out this article for what goes on behind the scenes. 

You can see the full set over at CBS: Link.

You can also see how Germany did in comparison: Link.

Our friends over at Reddit.com have also looked further into the event. Take a look at the conversation for more on the backstory and some other speculation: Reddit Link.

With that in mind, we’d like to know your thoughts. 

Michael Phelps of the US Olympic Swimming team 

Jonathan Horton of the US Olympic Gymnastics team 

Cassidy Krug of the US Diving Olympic team

Nastia Liukin of the US Olympic Gymnastics team 

Rebecca Bross of the US Olympic Gymnastics team 

Siblings Diana Lopez and Steven Lopez of the US Taekwondo Olympic team

Sarah Robles of the US Olympic Weightlifting

Tony Gunawan of the US Badminton Olympic team 

Leshawn Merritt of the US Track and Field Olympic team 

Debbie Capozzi of the US Women’s Olympic Sailing team

Gaby Douglas of the US Olympic Gymnastics team 

Lindsey Berg of the US Olympic Volleyball team

Shot putter Jillian Camarena-Williams of the US Track and Field Olympic team

Lashinda Demus of the US Track and Field Olympic team

Kayla Harrison of the US Judo Olympic team

Brendan Hansen of the US Swimming Olympic team 

Credit to Matt for sending this story in.

Since the KONY 2012 video has been released, it has instantly spread like wildfire all over the web. I haven’t seen anything go this viral in a long time. If you haven’t seen it already, here is the synopsis, 

1) A man name Joseph Kony is a leader of a rebel group called the LRA in Central Africa.

2) Kony uses his army of rebels to abduct children from villages. The children (mostly boys) are then forced to hurt or kill their loved ones or friends. The girls are used as sex slaves for the rest of the rebel army.

3) The year 2012 is the year Kony will be taken out of the picture. By spreading this video and other media across the nation, the people/news/government will remain focused on Kony.

4) The goal of this whole movement is to make Joseph Kony famous. By tweeting/contacting celebrities and calling government officials you are helping spread the word about Kony.

by umop_ep1sdn on this topic

These viewpoints below do not reflect mine, nor express what I feel about the video. I am posting this just to give readers an insight on another point of view that has become quite popular for the sake of educating those who may have seen it already. 

Also, I would like to know your thoughts on the video and the facts below. 

The video itself is a good piece of emotional p*rn but that’s about it. It’s honestly NOT worth the 30 minutes when you find out somethings about the organization that is doing this [Invisible Children].

First of all, the guy who made that film get’s paid $90,000 a year. That’s for him and his family. This does not include him paying costs for film equipment, video editting software, nor does it cover travel or accomodations whilst in anywhere else. Those are all covered under the ludicrous budgets that the Invisible Children organization actually deal with. Let’s go to that now. Here are some expenses from CharityNavigator.

Compensation of Leaders | % of Compensation relative to amount of money made by IC | Title

• $88,241 | 0.99% | Ben Keesey - CEO
• $89,669 | 1.00% | Jason Russell - Co-Founder/Filmmaker
• $84,377 | 0.94% | Laren Poole - Co-Founder/Filmmaker

Revenue

• Total Contributions: $10,334,060
• Program Service Revenue: $3,423,351
• Total Primary Revenue: $13,757,411
• Other Revenue $7,769
• TOTAL REVENUE: $13,765,180

Expenses

• Program Expenses: $7,163,384
• Administrative Expenses: $1,444,570
• Fundraising Expenses: $286,678
• TOTAL FUNCTIONAL EXPENSES: $8,894,632

Payments to Affiliates $0 Excess (Or deficit) for the year: $4,870,548

Net Assets $6,584,811

As if that isn’t bad enough, they’ve refused to Co-operate with the Better Business Bureau, Their transparancy rating is fairly low on Charity Navigator, and allegations of fraud. HuffingtonPost has an article on it here.

Besides, they make a fairly large point about sending money to the Ugandan Military. This is a big no no for a couple of reasons. First of all, Kony isn’t even in Uganda. Funding a military that has no real authority over another country to LOOK in other countries, is a moronic idea to begin with. Secondly, the Ugandan military is already using this as an excuse to enter other countries and exploit resources from surrouding areas. The Government of Uganda is full of criminals that are worse than Kony himself. Not to mention the bloody PRESIDENT of Uganda is responsible for millions of deaths. Then you’ve got allegations coming out that Kony is already dead. The LRA (Konys ragtag bunch of assholes) isn’t that large, or all that active.

The worst thing about Invisible Children (In my opinion) is that they lobbies for DIRECT MILITARY INTERVENTION IN AFRICA. After all of the terrorist hunts in the Middle East, and having troops stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq, don’t you think that the people would have learned by now that having troops in another country to hunt one asshole isn’t exactly the best idea? Especially when some of the Republicans believe that invading Iran is a fairly good idea at the moment. There are SERIOUS issues with this group, issues that people are overlooking. I will admit that at first I was already on Twitter and ready to bitch at people about the injustice that’s being served in other countries and then I decided to look into the organization. The information is there, and willing, but people are fearful to even look. Fearful, lazy, or just swept up by the movement. Injustice exists in the world. It is damn stupid, and it sucks ass, but that’s the nature of this planet at the moment.

Humanity, since rising from the primordial ooze, has killed people over far less than anything you could imagine. Then there’s the fact that if Kony is alive, and the ICC, or International Criminals Court, manages to put him on trial, what’s it going to achieve? Numerous war criminals have stood trial before the ICC. This isn’t a game of chess. You don’t topple a pawn and move on. The pawns replicate. It’s like fighting a hydra. If you slice off one head, more are going to pop up in it’s place. You remove one player, and 10 others will appear. Hell, there’s a case to be made that awareness driven egos perpetuate the current state of afafairs and are an intergral part of the current system of global unfairness. They offer placebos for guilty consciences and as such, they don’t change anything.

If you think of large entities such as Global Corporations, conglomorates and powerful nation states that capitalize on injustice, corruption and disorganization and exploit the poor for their resources and manpower, the best thing that could happen to them are programs such as this. There’s a lot of reasons why Invisible Children has a good idea of what they’re doing, but FAR too much on the opposite sides of the scales to tip myself (and no doubt others) into not bothering with this group and it’s practices.

Information retrieved by use of google, and a variety of different comments spread across Kony2012 post comment fields.

By Lord_cade on Reddit

We’ve all seen the ‘best of 2011’ galleries already, and I’ve posted a few myself. 

However, this one takes the cake. 

Link: http://lightbox.time.com/2011/12/31/lightbox-365-a-year-in-photographs/#1

Time released their annual collection of photographs. What makes this one different is that they have a photo, and a story, for every day of the year! Starting on January 1st, and going all the way to yesterday. 

Be careful, it’s highly addicting, I almost spent the last 2 hours reading everything.