MicrostockGroup

If you're tired of photos of eversmiling stock models wearing buisiness suits and using cellphones while shacking hands just look at this one:



And this isn't an amateurish one. Beside the camera used, there is really good illumination, the false vignetting is perfect for the subject and I already thought a hundred of possible usages of an image like this in advertisiment.

I'm really finding out that Flickr is a gold mine if you wanna research the "trend of the moment", far better than Getty's Creative Botique (**yawn**).

Thanks for pointing wiseacre out to us, ale1969 and sharply_done. Took a minute to look at the port and really liked it. 

Surely it isn't widely usable but I'm noticing more and more advertisements using that kind of creative shots (and also that kind of desaturated, vignetted images). I won't put that image as RF for sure, but as RM I think it could be VERY usable (just think at a magazine editorial depicting the nowadays problems of the US, that image would be perfect).

And I have an issue with the costume.  If the theme is "America past it's prime" or something, I think it would be important to depict the guy as someone who could have been Captain America in his heyday, and using the store bought muscle puffed up costume doesn't really show how pathetic he is now.  As it is, it's just a pitiful drunk guy in a Halloween costume after a party, which I doubt would sell very well.  Imo, of course.

What about a superpower country after a years long economic party and on the edge of recession? I'd say it would make a great cover for "The Economist". Just an example of how an apparently non-stock image could be used with great impact.