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• Mighty Girl - » Blog Archive » LIVING FOR THE NOW
  I think this ranks up there with Adam’s idea of getting a tattoo of ants marching into his bum crack. So wrong - but quite funny!
  (tags: funny random)

Stock photography is a tricky thing. There’s several kinds of stock; free stock, cheap stock, expensive stock, and commissioned stock. Hell, there’s probably more but that list is enough for now. Commissioned stock is the best if you don’t want your work to look like someone else’s. That’s great - but most of the time fairly costly. Then there’s .. well the rest. Anytime you use stock from one of the zillion stock photography sites you run the risk that someone out there will use the same photo as you.

I’ve seen it a bunch of times in the last few years and yes, I’ve even been the “victim” once –in the same event program, nevertheless. I was in charge of creating an ad for our company for a specific music event’s program. Well, I went to my favorite -affordable- stock site, iStockphoto. Looking up this music event, I had very limited choice as the event has a very specific theme. I found a nifty image, an illustration to be exact, and whipped up the ad. It went over well with my bosses and coworkers - great! Submitted the ad. Done.

When I finally saw the program I flipped through and just a few pages after our ad was another ad for a local company… and there was the same illustration, slightly different use, but easily recognizable. Oy.

The world didn’t stop, buildings did not crumble, and nobody really cared. Well, I cared a bit.

The last few I’ve noticed; Twitter’s bird is from iStock and it’s used in a popular Wordpress template and Overstock.com used an image of a well-dressed woman we used in an ad about 4 years ago for a local boutique. It’s stock, it’s supposed to be used - it’s not a big deal. Nobody else will notice it.

The other day I was doing some research and checked out Xerox’s website. For whatever reason, I lingered on the homepage for just enough time to see the photo being used after the purple squiggles swish by. Don’t want to linger there yourself? Here - check out this site instead. It’s the same photo. Hee.

More recently and in much more of a spotlight than any of the examples above, Esquire has run a cover shot of Obama that ran on the cover of Time only 6 months ago. Granted, the photos are most likely different yet from the same photoshoot (*very* slight differences) - at first glance, to the majority of people out in the world - they’re the same shot.

Now, photos of famous/celebrity types are going to be used and reused, this is not the first time it’s happened. But for such a prominent magazine, man, I’d think Esquire would be pretty embarrassed. Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor lists the likely reasons the Esquire cover shot made the press. My favorite is:

3. The writer or fact checker asked questions that caused the PR Director to use the Cover shoot as ransom to make changes to the story. You always save the hard questions and fact checking the difficult quotes till after all the reporting is done and the cover is in the can. If you don’t they can hold the shoot as ransom to make changes. If that happened here, Granger likely told them to go to hell and so went the cover shoot.

• ManBabies.com
  One of the most hilarious sites ever.
  (tags: funny photoshop weird random)

• How I Spent My Stimulus
  How did you spend yours? I haven’t got one yet, hopefully I will! It’ll be part of my Paris vacation fund.
  (tags: funny)

I keep telling myself, through any stress I encounter during the week, that I will soon be in my happy place.

The Maker Faire is coming to town! (May 3rd and 4th)

Art. Technology. Crafts. Music. (and more!)

I will participate in various demos, perhaps create on-the-spot crafts, learn a few things, listen to unique ensembles of music artists, shop at the Bazaar Bizarre and take plenty of photos - all for myself (for a change.)

My happy place.

When was the last time the topic of the Smothers Brothers came up in work for you? Well, at my job they get mentioned every so many months - mostly as a “when we worked with the Smothers…” comment. And, every single time, my bosses ask me if I know who they’re talking about.

Yes. Yes I do. And if you went to the elementary school I did, you were forced to watch the same Smothers Brothers special as I was. So after replying that yes, I did in fact know who they were - I proceed to tell them the one bit of memory I have. “Well, they’re standing in front of an orchestra and singing some song. One of them says ‘Take it’ and the funny one goes on about ‘Take it naked bacon’ and it’s quite funny.”

Thanks to the magic of the internets and youtube… here’s the Smothers Brother special with the Boston Pops (ah THAT orchestra)

• Wonderland: Atari art
  Paintings based on my favorite Atari game, River Raid
  (tags: art Games)

• best of craigslist : Survival Of The Fittest
  There can only be one.
  (tags: funny)

• Architecture in Helsinki - Like It Or Not
  A completely embroidered music video. How cool is that? [via CRAFT]
  (tags: art design music)