Reading What Sucks

While reading a magazine, have you ever wondered where all those pictures of smiling people actually come from? This sort of picture is called stock photography and there are thousands of businesses making a fortune by shooting and selling generic photos of smiling people.

My current job is to write an online shop so one of these companies can sell even more generic photos of smiling people. It's good money, but what's been driving me up the wall is looking at smiling people all day long. I mean, how much of this can a man take:

One more week of this and I'm off on a bloody rampage, brutally butchering any innocent bystander who does so much as indicate a movement of their mouth corners into the upward direction.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

This post was edited by Jaz on Oct 16, 2005.

Notice that not only are they smiling people. They're all smiling women.

I think this discriminatory. Men of the world need to step up and be accepted for the beautiful stock models they could be.

And I hope that someday, stock photography will truly be an equal opportunity employer.

:)

Please contiune to vote AND post.

It could be worse, man. Imagine you had to do an online shop for a proctologist supplier or something. (Hey, and you get paid to look at a lot of cute chicks!)

"God is dead." - Nietzsche, 1882 "Nietzsche is dead." - God, 1900

It reminds me of the classic "See spot. See spot run. Run spot run!" books of the 1950s. Everyone is smiling. Everyone is happy. For some reason, the whole theme of the 1950s seemed to be showing who is more psychotically happy than the next.

It'd throw in a crazy picture every now and again. After about 1000 pictures of people happy and smiling, you throw in one of a man holding his wife's decapitated smiling head, who is incidentally also smiling just as normal as all the other pictures. Or perhaps you could add a picture of this James Bond type character with a martini in his hand and a gun in the other with a gigantic explosion in the background with his face of that of perfect normalicy like that of a man waving at his best friend while barbequing in his backyard.

But that's just me.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

It could be worse, man. Imagine you had to do an online shop for a proctologist supplier or something.

You don't know about that other client of mine. I'm completely serious.

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

*Cough*...did anyone take a closer look at the pictures? I mean... okay... its hard to get over the smiles without vomiting, absolutely agreed, but if you sort of mask the faces, take a look at the scenes!

What are these pictures good for? Who would honestly "use" them for anything? Or are they free of royalties just *because* of being so dull?

Pic One:
Who would believe an anoretic, emaciated girl like that to own such a fridge filled with that much stuff? And even IF so, she would only open it deep in the night, when having her usual nightly hunger attack. And she wouldn't be smiling then, but having tears on her face, cause she's been too weak again to resist...

Pic Two:
I girl of 14 with a bunch of balloons? Excuse me... she would be dying of shame, if any of her classmates, anyone, who knows her, saw her like that! Give her a package of cigarettes or a .45er, THAT might make her smile realistic!

Pic Three:
Nonono... don't expect any comments about the behavior of our species' female half at gas stations! That's too easy! No... besides the fact that the station's company is too easy to guess, what the hell is she holding in her hands? It must have the weight a crate of beer, if you look at how she's holding it and how her muscles show on her arms! This cannot be the plug of the gas pipe... that's not that heavy! If she's taking other parts with that grip in her hands....whhoohhoooo... thank you....

Pic Four:
What a beautiful landscape... a broken fence and a juicy green meadow in the background, even majestic, misty hills... you can almost hear the brook burbling and the cows lowing... beautiful... but.... but... standing in the middle of nowhere, where the heck did she take the glass from??

Pic Five:
Oh my... where to start, actually there is EVERYTHING wrong about this picture you can think of: If you're painting a wall, which is what this roll in her hand is good for, would you *sit* on the ground? If you paint a wall white, would you place *opened* color paint bottles on the floor? If you want to mix colors, would you do that on the *blank wooden floor*, while 50 cm behind you is a cover to save the floor from splashes? Or would you mix colors with that roll in your hand?

Pic Six:
I love this one most! A woman doing the BBQ, while a man standing behind her? Hello? Who has ever seen anything like that? Which man on this whole wide word would retreat from the place at the fire in favour for a woman? Talking about fire.... could someone point me to the burning coal, please? But best of all: assuming there were a fire, assuming all men at the party were somehow put to sleep by something the lady put into their drinks: which woman on this side of the Orion-arm would stand that close to a fire, even worse, fat splashing raw meat wearing nothing but her best Saturday-night-dating-blouse with bare shoulders and open hair?

After decades of construction my website is finally up an running: www.kkds.de

Picture five is anoying me so much! I want to punch her in the face just so she would stop smiling!

I'm sorry for you, but more sorry for her, because I want to hit her!

I almost had you

Picture five is anoying me so much! I want to punch her in the face just so she would stop smiling!

Isn't she the only one making some effort to not appear completely bored by the photo shooting?

'Yeah, That's what Jesus would do. Jesus would bomb Afghanistan. Yeah.' - snowlion

It's that last one that really gets me. It's like she's just overjoyed at the big chunks of charred animal right in front of her. "Murder: it's what's for dinner!"

I'll believe in anything if you'll just believe in anything

[insert gratuitious picture of me smiling here in order to cajole Jaz into doing something rather rash]

Pistol Grip Pump In My Lap At All Times