How Terrible Shots of Olympians Went Viral ⇥ slate.com

Heather Murphy for Slate, sorting out some of the rumours from these particularly terrible photos:

And it’s sweet that in an era with few shared national heroes, even cynical bloggers care deeply about how our Olympians are portrayed. But poor Joe Klamar does not deserve to be treated like a bumbling visual terrorist.

After all, Klamar is an award-winning Czech photographer. So it’s worth trying to understand how he came to turn in such amateurish work. And let’s debunk some of the now-widespread Internet myths about his atrocious photos.

The photos are pretty horrible, but there are good reasons for the most egregious errors.

As an aside, any time someone says that they (or their kid) could do better, they have no idea what they’re talking about.