Funny Pictures: Humor In Stock Photography

Funny pictures, and effective stock photos, can be created by revealing the unexpected, as in this photograph of a nude audience to illustrate presentation issues.

Entertainment Advertising And Images We Want To See
Entertainment advertising is upon us. With the advent of TiVo and technologies that allow us to zip past commercials, with pop up window blockers, with viral advertising and with such a vast quantity of, well, stuff, to choose from on the Internet, on Television and even on Satellite Radio, advertisers are increasingly at the mercy of our viewing discretion. If they want to get their messages across, to get their messages seen, more and more they have to create advertisements that we want to see. They have to create entertainment advertising. One way for us still photographers to participate in this is through humor. We can increase our chances to prosper in these difficult times by creating images that employ humor with a strong concept that is relevant to the market.

Funny Pictures, Negative Concepts And Best Sellers
Funny pictures, stock photos employing humor, can take a variety of forms from black humor (negative or looming disaster) to silly (outrageous expressions) to the absurd (over-the-top imagery). I have often heard the negative images don’t sell, but my personal experience has been the opposite…when humor is introduced to that negative concept the image can be a best seller. Of course, the same is true for any of the concepts; humor, executed well, raises the bar for any image.

Facebook, Twitter And Going Viral
One particularly important aspect of adding humor to your photography, making your photos funny as well as informative, is that people love to share humor. Nothing can spread the word for an advertiser faster than people telling their friends, spreading the message, e-mailing it, posting it on Facebook and tweeting on Twitter. Humor is the grease for that Holy Grail, the message gone viral.

Half Time Commercials And Humor In Advertising
A premier example of the value placed on funny advertising is the Super Bowl, where in many cases people are looking forward to the half-time commercials more than the game itself. If you need proof of the premium placed on humor in advertising, you have to look no further.

 
By using a picture of a Sumo wrestler in this stock image I tried to minimize any possible offense to people struggling with weight issues.

Funny To One, Offensive To Another, And Sumo Wrestlers
You do have to be careful with humor though. It is important to remember that what is funny to one person, or one group of people, might well be offensive to another group. I encountered that very problem when trying to work out an idea I had for an impossible catch…a flying trapeze artist about to catch someone so overweight that the catch would seem impossible. I sat on the idea for over a year because I was afraid I would offend people who have to deal with obesity problems. Eventually I hit upon what I felt was a perfect answer…a Sumo wrestler. By using a Sumo wrestler in the shot the issue of obesity was sidestepped. Sumo wrestlers are extremely respected and proud of their size and are not generally regarded as suffering from obesity problems. I did check with my model, an actual Sumo wrestler, about whether there would be a problem with such an image, and both he and a Sumo wrestling association gave me a thumbs-up on the image.


Adding animals, such as with this lion trainer with his head in a lions mouth, is an effective way to add humor and impact to your stock photos.

The Unexpected, The Absurd, And Animals
As with the Sumo wrestler, showing the unexpected or the absurd is a great way to add humor to your stock photography. Another way of adding that “funny” element to your work is through the introduction of animals. People have a natural affinity for animals, particularly cats and dogs, but in the example here the cat is a big one and it works perfectly to create a timeless, funny and dramatic photo about the negative concepts of risk and danger.


This funny bowling picture works because the image walks that fine edge of possibility allowing a viewer to momentarily suspend their disbelief.

The Fine Edge Of Possibility
Another technique in adding effective humor to your imagery is by capturing situations that have plausibility, but are over the top. Part of the trick is to walk the fine edge of possibility, to create an image that is just real enough to make a viewer, if only for an instant, suspend their disbelief. If you can get a viewer to that place, where they pause and consider the situation, you have caught their attention and that is exactly the job of your photograph.

Funny Pictures, Success, And Revenue
Humor is a powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of your stock photography. It can turn negative messages into positive ones, increase the chance of viral success, and make people want to see your messages rather than avoid them. Funny pictures are the corner stone, for still photographers, of entertainment advertising, and as such can significantly add to your photography success, and to your revenue.

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

A Knock Your Socks Off Stock Photo

It is always exciting for me when I come up with an image idea that doesn’t seem to have been done before, and that is relevant to the market. I no longer remember when I first had the idea to create a “Knock your socks off” image, but the idea was rekindled when my girlfriend, Stephanie, was showing me how she could flex her toes. I checked on Getty and Corbis and didn’t see any similar imagery. This is potentially a really great stock image. It is a concept stock photo that can be applied to any product or service, or even to something as generic as a sale. The image has humor going for it. Funny pictures can be powerful attention grabbers. The photo is simple, a quick read, and has an “iconic” place in our culture. Another side benefit of an image like this one is the relative inexpensive nature of creating it.

The big decision for me was whether to have a “dust” cloud showing to emphasize that the socks are being “blown” off of the feet. There was also some question as to whether the toes should be articulated so much. Ultimately I decided that the dust clouds would help make the message more obvious, and that the articulated toes added to the humor.

The shoot was simple; I had Stephanie sit on the edge of a table and flex her toes. I lit her feet with a beauty dish above the camera and a soft box behind and on either side. I used Profoto 7B flash units. I filled a pair of socks with bubble wrap and positioned them on a light stand. I used the same lighting set-up as with Stephanie’s feet, and fired off a few frames. To create the dust cloud I used some face powder that had been left in my studio at some point. I created a pile of it on a piece of white foam core, then sprayed the pile with canned air with one hand while shooting with a Canon 1ds MKIII in the other. Not really a recommended technique, but it worked. Of course, my studio smelled like face powder for a week!

I used the pen tool to create clipping paths around both the feet and socks, then converted the paths into selections. I created a new “canvas”, then pasted the feet into place. Next I brought in the socks and sized and positioned them. I brought in two of the dust shots and created layer masks to fade them away into the background. I then duplicated the feet layers and dragged those new layers to the top. The next step was to create layer masks to hide the new feet layers, then I used white “paint’ with the airbrush to create the illusion that the feet were showing through the dust clouds.

All in all, it only took a few hours to put the photograph together. The final question is whether the image should be a Rights Managed image, or a Royalty Free one. I finally decided that I would stick with RM on this one. An image like this one will probably do equally well in either model, but my ego tends towards Rights Managed, and that’s how this “blow your socks” off image ended up.

The Most Influential Photographer of My Career (Not)

The Most Influential Photographer of My Career (Not)
I recently got an e-mail from a young photographer wanting to know who was the most influential photographer was for my career. It got me thinking. The most influential person in my career hasn’t been a photographer at all. Rather, it was a motivational speaker named Brian Tracy. I have an audio book on tape, and now CD, by Brian called “How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible”.

I have listened to Brian Tracy more times than I can remember and every single time I get something out of it. There are always nuggets that motivate me and fire me up for just a day and there are a number of principles that I believe, if followed, can’t help but make me succeed.

For example, one of Tracy’s tenets is that one should take a realistic assessment of where one is. A person needs to be realistic if he or she is going to make good decisions. This is an important thing I try to remember whenever I am making decisions, but looking back one particular instance comes to mind when that “reality check” made a huge difference in my career.

The year was 1990 and while I was coming off of my best year yet, the economy was tanking. It was like someone had turned off the faucet, I just wasn’t getting any work. I took a good hard look at my entire situation and in particular my portfolio. I asked myself who was going to hire me instead of my competition…and why. The answer was no one. I wasn’t doing anything unique, anything to set myself off from other photographers.

I had been dabbling with in camera multiple exposures. That experimental work was the only really interesting work I had. I committed to building my entire book around that technique. I spent the next two months going through my files finding images that worked together, and creating multiple exposure in-camera montages. Then I went out and started showing the work. Two things happened. First, it worked. I began to get assignments for that kind of approach. Secondly, it was one thing to find images in my book that worked well together, but an entirely different thing to get an assignment and have to create a montage from images that don’t work well together! Arrgh!

It was precisely at that time that a friend suggested to me that I look at this new thing called Photoshop. I did. As they say, the rest is history. Now at that time I was truly broke, but I knew I had to start using this program if my career was going to succeed.

I used the money I was saving for taxes to buy a used Macintosh computer. I called Adobe and asked if I could trade photography for a copy of the program. They agreed and even offered to give me some training. To make a long story short, I immediately began to train myself by making stock shots for my portfolio and soon began to use Photoshop in my assignment work.

Another Brian Tracy principle that I embrace is this: Ask yourself what is the one thing that you need to do better; more than anything else, to move your career forward. What is your weak spot? Find out that weak spot and then master it. Once you have mastered it, ask yourself, what is the one thing that you need to do better more than anything else to move your career forward…and so on.

Heck, how could anyone follow this principle and not succeed? BTW, right now, in answer to that question, I am learning Final Cut Pro. I believe motion is already an important part of the stock photo mix and the thing that right now is the most important skill to acquire to advance my career in stock.

To take one more page from Tracy, I have a plan and I write it down. There is something magical about writing goals down. There are some who believe there is something mystical about this process, and maybe there is, but what I ascribe to it is firmly planting the goal in your mind and giving you a much higher chance of actually taking the steps one needs to take to reach that goal.

The process is simple. Write down your goals and the dates by which you want to achieve them (push yourself but be realistic). Then write down the steps you need to reach those goals and assign deadlines for each step. If you miss a deadline, simply give it another deadline using your best educated guess. This plan is not set in concrete, and as you review it changes will come. Your goals will shift; the steps will come and go. But you will be making progress and success will breed success. I have followed this process and every once-in-a-while I pick up an old plan and…wow…I have reached so many of my goals!
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how easily it is for me to lose sight of those important steps I need to take while I attend to all the piddling little things that vie for my attention. Reviewing my plan, the more often the better, helps keep me on track to actually do those important things. To that end, writing out my goals each morning is a truly powerful way to stay on track and reach those goals faster than I ever thought possible!

The Future of Stock Photography - Again!

Someday there will be an ‘e-bay” of photography where consumers and businesses, designers and art directors, agencies and photo buyers will all go to find and license image for their disparate needs. A student will look for images to complete a homework assignment…and an Art Director for a major ad agency will find an image for a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal. The student might pay twenty-five cents while the Art Director might pay $10,000.00. The popularity of an image, in conjunction with the use, will determine the price that will be paid. The best photographers will make more money than they ever have before…and photographers who are sound business people will find a way to make good money too. Those of us who are less creative, less diligent and less motivated will fall further and further behind. I guess that is one thing that won’t really change in the business of stock photography! Those who “get it” will thrive…as they always have while those who remain stuck in the past will slowly (or quickly) fade away.
As professional photographers who sell their images to the advertising, design and editorial communities, many of us have lost sight, or perhaps have never seen the tremendous buying power of the “consumer”. My eyes were opened to that when I began to sell my Animal Antics images…pictures of funny animals in anthropomorphic poses and situations, as greeting cards. Sure, I only make a few cents per card…but when the public is buying over a hundred thousand cards a month those pennies can really add up!
Even with sales like that most people who I talk to about my greeting cards have never seen the cards for sale! So I conclude that sales of a hundred thousand cards-a-month represents only a small fraction of the total possible number of sales. The potential income from selling images to the public, to the consumer, is staggering. Especially if you consider that images, for the most part, are a universal language.
So how do we, the photographers, tap into that market? Well, obviously greeting cards portraying funny animal pictures is one way to do that. But that really isn’t a very efficient way to do it. The internet is the way to do it…but perhaps not yet. That above mentioned “e-bay” for photographs…or some similar mechanism to marry the elements of consumer, photographs and transactions, needs to come in to place. The need is there…I bet the technology is too…the rest is simply a matter of time…and preparation.
For me that means having a website that is reasonably functional in getting my images in front of the public…and having content that the public wants. That content can be anything from pictures that consumers can download and print (and that they WANT to download and print), to images they can license for their small business or images they can use to spice up their social networking site. I am attempting to offer such content to the consumer by linking up with Café Press for products such as coffee mugs, calendars, handbags, T-shirts and the like…to ImageKind for fine art prints, to the various stock photo agencies that license my photographs for more traditional advertising and promotional uses. Currently I use Blend Images for ethnic lifestyle and conceptual imagery, Getty Images for most of my conceptual and business images, Corbis also for concept images, and Kimball Stock for the licensing of my anthropomorphic animal pictures. I also continue to sell greeting cards through the Portal brand that is published and distributed by the Marian Heath greeting card company.
Any investment counselor will tell you that the first thing to do in investing is to diversify. That is of particular importance in time of uncertainty…and I think these times qualify for that label. As photographers we need to follow that same advice. How do we diversify? For me that means a multi-pronged approach. I diversify in my content, in my target market, and in my distribution.
I create images for the traditional advertising, design, corporate and editorial markets. Within those markets I create lifestyle images, business images, and conceptual images. Here I am diversifying the content within the category of traditional stock photography. Next, I create images for the consumer…that is images that in them selves are or can be product. That means everything from photo imprinted coffee mugs to photos for checks, photos for screensavers…you get the picture. I also, once a year, take a trip specifically to shoot travel images. Again…further diversification of my content.
To diversify my distribution I utilize both those traditional “powerhouse” stock photo agencies like Getty and Corbis, and niche agencies like Blend Images (for ethnically diverse lifestyle and business imagery) and Kimball Stock (for funny animal pictures). Further diversification of my distribution is achieved by selling greeting cards through Marian Heath greeting cards and hiring a licensing agent to sell and distribute other “consumer” images for such wide-ranging applications as vet reminder cards, gift books and even figurines and picture frames!
And finally, I have my website which I am fine-tuning as a vehicle to make my photographs available to anyone who might be interested in them, and in guiding them to the appropriate distributor for their needs. I believe that those of us who establish such websites now and learn from that process, will have a huge head-start when that new paradigm lands on us…as it surely will! When that wave hits I want to be experiencing the thrill of riding it rather than the pain of being crushed beneath it.