Thursday, July 15, 2010

Schlock Stock

In the early days of the World Wide Web, stock photography sites were born.

Suddenly designers could search for images more easily than ever, and there was a way to deliver digital files to them easily and cheaply. No more big printed books full of teeny-tiny pictures; no more CDs sent by FedEx or, even worse, transparencies that had to be scanned.

But as anyone knows who has searched for images on stock sites, there's a lot of odd and inappropriate stuff out there. Sometimes it's inept search results (looking for tofu gets you fish; looking for an oak leaf gets you a maple leaf), but sometimes it's the images themselves.

A Tumblr site called awkwardstockphotos.com has been compiling some of the worst.

Young white woman with skin painted brown, wearing a bacon necklace and licking her lips
Unfortunately, they got a cease and desist notice from istockphoto.com after about a month of operation, so they had to take down the images from those posts, but there's still a lot of weirdness to see, like this bronzed, badly coiffed, bacon-decorated babe from Getty Images.

Via kottke.org

4 comments:

Nancy/BLissed-Out Grandma said...

I didn't even recognize that as bacon until I read your description. Just so wrong!

Carmella said...

OMG! How did you not send me this directly! You know I collect everything BACON.

That tongue though... if it was bright blue I would say skinky!

Unknown said...

Thanks for this post! When I went to the site today, the juxtaposition of the bongo-playing taxidermied, um, fish-thing with the madly dancing older couple on the green shag rug was just magical.

Daughter Number Three said...

Jeanne, your recent reference to the raw turkey with scantily clad woman is what got me thinking about this.