Awkward Stock Photos

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Awkward Text Post Amongst Awkward Stock Photos (About This Site)

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the support.

I hate to sound like I’m giving a speech at an awards ceremony, but I promise I just need to say a few things and we can go back to the photos.

Without the tumblr engine, none of this would have been possible. But it really just starts there. Twitter has been involved, with a dash of Facebook here and there. BoingBoing pushed us along and Ars Technica was there when things went down with iStockPhoto. There have been a plethora of articles and blog posts written about the site. It has grown organically from the get-go and it has been an amazing journey. Very recently, from my perspective of this whole thing, the simplest tweet has increased visits to this site 10,000% in about two week’s time.

YOU - the viewer/submitter/commenter - have latched on to this thing and pushed it forward to where it is now. Let’s give ourselves a round of applause!

Let it be known that I will never ask for your money, or partner up with your stock photo website so I can “legally” post your photos on this site. In fact, I’m still not sure if what I’m doing is illegal, there haven’t been any DMCA notices coming through tumblr support lately. Did anyone else just see the founder of tumblr post about ASP?

Also, I’ll just put this here - “Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.” So keep commenting people!

Ahem… so… uhhhh…..

Awkward Stock Photos is a great example of an online social community, period. More specifically a social community of admirers of these forgotten and rarely purchased stock photos, or as I, and I think many others like to call them, “art.”

To the stock photo companies that don’t want their photos on this site, I’m sorry but what the hell is wrong with you? I am providing traffic to your site for photos that are rarely bought, and there is proof on your own websites that certain photos have boosted sales after being featured on this site. If it makes you feel any better, I never intend to favor any company, or plan on making money off of this site. It’s for the laughs, for the artists who take these photos, and absolutely anyone who wants to join in on the fun. Seriously stop being so corporate and just let it ride. This is what social media is. It’s free, it’s organic, it doesn’t need ads. If it really bothers you that much, ask me to remove the photos or sue me. I’ll obviously fold because I’m just a guy.

What I’m getting at is, this is what it is. And it’s not going to change. In an age where every company is out to saturate social media to the point where our own personal lives are used as data to sell shit, no. Not here. This is what it is.

Back to the photos!

- Mark