today i read an article about the merits of stock photography. it you don't already know what this is, it is essentially a massive collection of photographs which are taken and edited with the express purpose of sale (often at a low price) to art/photo buyers who have a specific vision or photo in mind. stock photos might be used for a magazine ad, a logo, a poster. it could be anything, but often it will be marketing.
so here is the issue. the author (post-production man on board with chase jarvis, a popular adventure photographer) contended that the specific guidelines and editing process involved in stock photography, as well as the 'crisp perfection' required for submission, stifle the 'raw emotive' quality of photography. stock photography, he seemed to be saying, is dead. it lacks imagination. i suppose that the issue here is dependent on the stock company. certainly imaginative photos could be found within the stock photography tradition, but the question is not about the exception so much as the rule.
i believe that part of the issue is that people are lazy. it is just to easy to log into google, type in 'zebra', and up comes your picture. if you want something of printable quality, you throw in the word 'stock' or 'photo' and presto, somewhere in the top ten is going to be something you can buy, print, advertise. you get the picture. lazy buyers make lazy artists. if i, the aspiring photographer, see pristine, edited photos of frogs and lamps all over the internet, then that's what i'm going to try to learn, make available, and thus the cycle.
let me just cut to the chase. i believe that emotion is an integral element to art. i also believe that creativity can be almost anywhere.
the question is, does every photograph need to fall into the same category of art? could the distinction between 'fine art' and 'art' be the difference between 'raw emotive' photography and the picture of the tree frog that sells cell phones? taken to the extreme, the question becomes, should thoughtful and artistic people be making stock photography?
as an interesting side-note:
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Tyler, it has been great to see your creative talent at work in this blog. I am drawn into the words in your profile "planning bold adventures'. Let's make a company that does that for people. Another one of my business ideas was to build treeforts. Could it work? Anyway, I guess this has turned into more than a comment on stock photography, heck it never was a comment on that. Love you man.
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