Stock Photo Clichés
Part of a series on Stock Photography. [View Related Entries]
[View Related Sub-entries]
About
Stock Photo Clichés are a variety of eccentric and seemingly arbitrary themes often found in stock photography, such as "women laughing alone with salad" or "people kissing computers alone."
Origin
Common depositories of stock photographs weren't easily accessible to public until the arrival of large corporate agencies like Getty Images and Corbis in the 1990s. The market for stock photography has continued to expand in the 2000s with the emergence of microstock photography services[1] like iStockPhoto, ShutterStock and Fotolia, where citizen or amateur photographers can submit their own work for distribution.
The first curation of awkward stock images began with the launch of the single topic blog Awkward Stock Photos in January 2010. Created by Chicago-based graphic designer Mark Hauge[5], the site ran a wide variety of sample stock images handpicked from stock photography websites.
Spread
Throughout January 2012, Hauge's Tumblr blog was written about by several art and tech-related blogs and news sites including GeekSugar, BoingBoing and Paste Magazine among others. The blog was met by another round of concentrated news coverage in February 2010, when the microstock photography service iStockPhoto submitted a Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown notice to Tumblr regarding Hauge's site.
The blog continued its publication despite its early hiccup over copyright infringement, but the ironic appreciation for stock photo cliches didn't become widespread until January 3rd, 2011, when The Hairpin published a compilation of stock photos of women laughing alone with salad bowls.[2] The Hairpin article "women laughing alone with salad" quickly turned into a viral development, generating more than 130 comments and boosting the site's traffic from several thousands of daily visits to 265,900 daily visits on the day of publication, according to Quantcast.
Quantcast Traffic Stats for TheHairPin.com
The article received extensive coverage from BuzzFeed[3], Mental Floss[4], Gawker[5], and Metafilter[6] in the following week, as well as getting mentioned by the meta-single topic blog Single Topic Blog of Single Topic Blogs.[15] Soon, additional compilation threads highlighting other strange recurring themes in stock photography began to emerge on Reddit[7] and 4chan[17], as well as feature articles on internet news sites like BuzzFeed[18] and the Huffington Post.
Gender-Specific Themes
Reflecting the viral impact of "Women Laughing Alone with Salad," several other variations on the theme surfaced in the following months, most notably "Men Laughing Alone with Fruit Salad," "Women Proud Of Their Two Apples," "Women Resisting Delicious Cakes and Pies" and "Women Struggling to Drink Water." The trend of men or women doing awkward things in stock photography was covered by various online communities and publications, such as 4chan[17], Reddit[10], The Huffington Post[9], UpRoxx[8], The Daily What[11] and The Hairpin.[12]
This Week in Ridiculous Stock Photos
Throughout 2011, The Huffington Post ran a weekly series titled "This Week in Ridiculous Stock Photos,"[16] which curated notable collections of sample stock photos on a regular basis. Some of the more notable examples include:
- Business People Doing Yoga
- People Looking Shocked in Front of Computers
- Doctors with Crossed Arms
- Women Ignored by Men Over Tech Gadgets
- White People Celebrating Thanksgiving
- Old People Using Computers
- Sad Businessmen At Bars
- Business People Using Megaphones
- Distracted People Chopping Vegetables
- Creepiest Stock Photo Clowns
- Business People in Nature
- People Holding Mini Houses
- People Alone Kissing Computers
Men Helping Cook Dinner
On January 22nd, 2018, Twitter[19] user @mikerugnetta posted a series of cookbook covers. In the photos, men are standing behind women and helping them cook. He captioned the first tweet (shown below, left) "these poor women." The post received more than 5,400 retweets and 21,000 likes in two days.
Later that day, he tweeted[20] another series of covers with the caption "WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OF THESE." The post (shown below, right) received more than 1,000 retweet and 4,700 likes in two days.
People responded to the post with zoomed-in pictures of the cookbooks. Twitter[21] user @angharadyeo tweeted a picture of a man holding a women's hand as the two cut a cucumber. They captioned the post "At what point will we be using the pot in the preparation of what looks like cucumber sandwiches?" The post (shown below) received more than 240 retweets and 3,700 likes in two days.
Several media outlets covered the popularity of the tweets, including Bustle[22] and The Daily Mail.[23]
On January 23rd, Twitter[24] published a Moments page about the popularity of the tweets.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Wikipedia – mircrostock photography
[2] The Hairpin – Women Laughing Alone With Salad
[3] BuzzFeed (via Wayback Machine) – Women Laughing Alone With Salad
[4] Mental Floss – Woman Laughing Alone With Salad, and other strange trends in stock imagery
[5] Gawker – Women laughing alone with salad. Any questions?
[6] Metafilter (via Wayback Machine) – Women Laughing Alone With Salad
[7] Reddit – Women laughing alone…with salad
[8] UpRoxx – Women Struggling to Drink Water is the New Women Laughing Alone With Salad
[9] The Huffington Post – Women Struggling To Drink Water
[10] Reddit – Women struggling to drink water
[11] The Daily What (via Wayback Machine) – Morning Links
[12] The Hairpin – Women Struggling to Drink Water
[13] Tumblr – Women Laughing Alone with Salad
[14] BadStockArt – Bad Stock Photography
[15] Single Topic Blog of Single Topic Blogs (via Wayback Machine) – Awkward Stock Photos
[16] Huffington Post – This Week in Ridiculous Stock Photos
[17] 4chanarchive (via Wayback Machine) – Men Laughing Alone with Fruit Salad
[18] BuzzFeed – Women resisting delicious cakes and pies
[19] Twitter – @mikerugnetta's Tweet
[20] Twitter – @mikerugnetta's Tweet
[21] Twitter – @angharadyeo's Tweet
[22] Bustle – The “Men Helping Cook Dinner” Photo Trope On Cookbooks Just Became The Laughingstock Of Twitter
[23] The Daily Mail – 'These poor women!' Instant Pot books mocked for VERY cheesy cover shots that show smiling men looming over their partners as they cook
