Giant Hands of God Install Wind Turbines in Countryside
The weirdness of many modern stock photos can be explained partially by the rise of “microstock” photography—stock photos hosted on big sites like iStockPhoto and Shutterstock (where we got a lot of these shots from) that came online in the mid-2000s. These sites basically opened the gates for professional photographers to try their hand at stock photos, stock photographers to up their earnings by submitting thousands of different shots, and any amateur photographer to try their hand at making photos for people to use.
Opening the field to everyone in this way has both drove down prices for photos and also encouraged creativity in staging some photos as photographers searched for a niche that could make their shots stand out. And that, friends, is how you end up with three hands holding wind turbines coming successively into focus in front of a knockoff of the iconic Windows XP hill.
