Photo of the Week: “Marcmaddox’s” Hammer

By Manuel Carrillo III - August 23, 2013

The image you see above isn’t really our photo of the week. The one below is.

Forum member “marcmaddox” attempted to post an image of his 2005 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG, asking forum members to critique his car and photography/editing skills. Unfortunately, marcmaddox came up 529,920 pixels short, so an error message was posted instead.

Forum members responded quite comically to marcmaddox‘s mistake. One response in particular from typhoon43 is pretty much the MBWorld.org forum post of the year. It reads:

“As a Graphic Designer and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, I feel qualified to chime in here. Let’s take a look at your photo:

“First impressions: I love your use of free space. You didn’t clutter the frame like so many other people who get a sub 1k DSLR and believe they are Ansel Adams reincarnate. The use of gray and neutral blue tones doesn’t blow out the highlights of your text message. I’d like to compliment you on your use of Calibri. Most people are still stuck in an Arial haze. You’re definitely pushing the envelope and staying with the hottest font trends. All in all, I believe your framing is good. Rule of thirds has been applied by keeping the text to the left, and your photo definitely invokes a feeling of subtlety. It didn’t just jump out and yell ‘HEY! LOOK AT ME!’ Conversely, it made me WANT to look deeper into the photo — to find the edges – to check the punctuation. You, sir, definitely have an eye for fantastic photos. Keep up the great work!

“And not to blow my own horn, but since we’re sharing our portfolios in a public forum, here is the photo that brought me the 2007 ‘Achievements in Photojournalism’ award from the International Academy of Master Photographers. I was just free-rolling with my Canon 5D and captured this utterly raw display of human emotion. It was truly just me being in the right place at the right time. I doubt I will ever capture something so pure, so animalistic, and I feel blessed to have framed that moment for all posterity. Shot at F 2.4, 1/600 shutter speed, 400 ISO, and post-processed in Lightroom for normal color correction. I hope you like it.”

typhoon43 then proceeded to post this “award-winning” picture:

typhoon43, we salute you. Never in the history of the Internet has there been such a calculated response to an error message. You are a comedic virtuoso. This may be a Photo of the Week post, but we’re really here to crown typhoon43 our member of the year.

On marcmaddox‘s behalf, typhoon43 later posted the image intended to be critiqued, and what we get is a decent-looking ride, although when the forum got around to seeing it, they weren’t so thrilled with the grill.

If you’re wondering what kind of rims those are, they’re Rennen two-piece forged RM5 X Concave wheels finished in gunmetal & clear powder coat. marcmaddox says, “They are extremely well-made; not light by any means. They are 19×8.5 and 19×10. They weighed exactly the same as the stock wheels.”

Here’s a more detailed shot of the wheels in chrome.