Earlier this summer Gettycrtics.com, a new website that makes fun of lousy or absurd stock photography, was posted on Reddit. Six days later it had a million hits. Now they’ve released a dubbed video mocking bad stock footage.
EARLIER THIS SUMMER Gettycritics.com, a new website that makes fun of lousy or absurd stock photography, was posted on Reddit. Six days later it had a million hits. Now they’ve released a dubbed video mocking bad stock footage (below).
Gettycritics.com is the brainchild of Andrew MacPhee and Bart Batchelor, both art directors who constantly need stock photography for campaigns. Over time they’ve looked at thousands and thousands of images and in all their searching they’ve noticed that some stock photos don’t quite work.
For example, there’s the photo they once ran across that showed a happy family eating breakfast but the dad was pouring the kid a cup of coffee. Or the one they found that showed a family out raking leaves, not in their front yard, but in some random park.
“We started finding all kinds of these photos that are seemingly normal but also have something fundamentally absurd,” says MacPhee, who used to work at the same agency as Batchelor, but recently moved to a new one.
Pointing out these oddities seemed like a perfect blog idea so back in July the pair created Gettycritics.com, named after Getty Images, which has a humongous photography archive and was the first place they usually turned for stock.
Initially they started the blog for their friends – other people in advertising or design who could appreciate the flaws. But Reddit proved the website has a broader appeal.
Last week the duo also ventured into dubbed video. In addition to still images, sites like Getty provide short clips that don’t usually have any sound. MacPhee and Batchelor took their favorites and made a stitched-together real, then added their own simple sound affects. After less than a week it had 100,000 views.
“Adding sound affects just augmented how absurd the video already was,” Batchelor says.
The video is pretty easy to digest and understand, but for the photos it’s not always obvious what’s so funny. That’s why MacPhee and Batchelor always include their own commentary. Like the photo of the well-dressed woman mowing the lawn. The caption reads:
“First, the lawn is already mowed. Second, who dresses up for a cocktail party and then does yard work? Unless this is one of those underground New York yard work cocktail parties we read about in Vice.”
So far Getty hasn’t come after the website. MacPhee and Batchelor say they have nothing against the company – they use their work all the time. They were worried initially but plan to keep putting up work as long as they can.
“I guess Getty is reaping the benefits or don’t care, or maybe they haven’t finished their lawsuit,” MacPhee says.
very good