claytonfm

poor composition and poor lighting management.

Hyperhad Loc: Thunder Bay, Canada

Over-processed images in print, magazines.
Contests winners where other images were much more "natural". To my taste, anyway.
Poorly-composed images in print, magazines.
Contest winners where other images were much better compositionally.

tomcat

What annoys me more than anything else is a background that is too bright and blown out/overexposed. It detracts from the subject matter since your eye is always drawn to the brightest area in a photo. It reeks of an amateur photographer that does not know how to properly expose the the background.

Kuzano

People! Any and all People!

Bushpilot Loc: Minnesota

Nothing about a posters' image annoys me, if it doesn't have at least some degree of impact, I don't spend time looking at them.

skeeth

Mine is peoples spelling-definatly!!!!!!!

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Definitely my single, biggest gripe, too. (Though I also have some other gripes at times.)

I NEVER let out an image without checking that verticals are plumb and horizons look "right".

Horizon lines aren't always exactly parallel to the edges of the image... verticals can be a better reference.

What makes it worse is when there is water shown in the image and it's obvious that it's "tilted".

My cameras have grid lines in the viewfinder and on the Live View display, to help me "get it right" in camera as best possible. But I also use a grid overlay in Lightroom and the first thing I do with most images is make sure that it's not askew.

P.S. There ARE times when I break the rule... deliberately shoot an out of level or out of vertical image "for effect". It can make for a dynamic action shot, for example. But that's something I don't do very often... There are FAR more images that just look bad when horizons or verticals are obviously out of whack.

And I may be more sensitive to this than some people, because for many years I built houses and learned to be able to "see" plumb and level pretty darned accurately. I can usually visually detect a half degree out of plumb.

Some other things that bug me...

People who ONLY take horizontal/landscape format shots (unless they are actually landscape shots). Hey, here's a news flash... Your camera can be rotated to vertical/portrait orientation! That often makes for a better composition. Probably half my shots are horiz., half vert. In fact, sometimes when the subject allows, I shoot it both ways so that I have choice of orientations later. (Just as irritating are videos shot vertically! The way videos are ALWAYS displayed, that's just plain dumb and lazy.)

Selfies.... Hey, GET OVER yourself!

Personal food shots... I really could care less what you had for b'fast, lunch or dinner. I can understand taking shots of food for advertising and some other purposes.... but often there's nothing very appetizing about many of the food shots I see people post.

Obvious laziness... Such as taking one shot, then walking away satisfied. Or, taking a whole lot of shots, but not changing position so they end up just being repetitive, i.e. no effort to explore other angles. "Zoom" laziness is part of that... standing one spot and using the zoom all the time. God gave you two legs.... use em! This also applies to using filters when one shouldn't... or not using a lens hood when one should. Oh, and it also shows up in dumb questions that would have been fully answered had the photographer simply taken the time to read and study the #&(#&ing manual! I've seen a lot of folks consistently use the wrong focus mode or white balance setting.

Another "biggie".... BLAMING the camera and lens, when it's the photographer whose at fault!

I'm sure if I spent some time on it, I could think of some more.

Racmanaz Loc: Sunny Tucson!

What annoys me the most is horizontally leveled photos.

stan0301 Loc: Colorado

A photograph can only say one thing--anything that draws the eye that is not part of that message shouldn't be there
Stan

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

I fully agree, Barry. Un-level drives me nuts. And overcooked are indigestible!

Kuzano

That's when you use "fill flash". It fills in the faces. Just try it. You'll start taking pics with light coming in over the shoulders of your subject. Since I don't shoot any people, I learned about "fill flash" on animals, years ago and shooting film.

Chelle

I'm more of a purist - other than a crop, I prefer images that are unedited.
So, my annoyance would be that those sharp tones came from photoshop...not from the photographer!

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

This is actually a deliberate technique used a lot by sports photographers doing posed "T&I" (team and individual) shots on location.

To deal with the strong light, you pose your subjects with their backs to the sun, then use fill flash (off camera on a bracket is better, possibly diffused, but direct/not bounced... even better is one or two large studio strobes on stands shot through a soft box or bounced out of umbrellas).

When folks are facing the sun, they squint and wrinkle up their faces. BAD NEWS! There also are often ugly shadow problems with direct sunlight, unless the sun is low on the horizon.

Selene03

I agree with most of what has been said here. I guess what I wonder about is that while I hate a lot of those garish overprocessed photos and many of you here seem to as well, why is it that they are so popular. I used to enjoy going to local art shows to see what people were doing with their cameras. Now all I see are garish photos of the same landscapes--this one has more red, this one more magenta, etc--but they are the same landscape scenes just overprocessed in different bright colors. One of my friends said that a professional told her that is the only kind of photo that gets into shows these days. I don't know if that true, but I haven't seem many photos in shows that I have liked much in several years. Maybe it is just me who doesn't like the bright colors, but I see a lot of people here don't either. Actually, I do like bright colors, not just in the same old, same old landscape shots. I have a lot of very colorful art from around the world that I truly enjoy. Anyway, I think that is what annoys me most about photos, though I can't stand crooked shots either, I do work hard to get lines straight.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I am annoyed only by the praise others give to noisy, poorly exposed and poorly composed, images.