Jeepers creepers, not sure about that POTW IS have chosen this week (Rose Painted Dancer on Floral Bench) - she is kinda scary 

Awesome and inspiring! Thanks for sharing - this reminds me of an Uma Thurmon movie I saw several years ago (can't think of a title) but there was a group of people who shot a series of images for a calender the same way - painting the model to be part of the background. I'll bet they saw that movie, I wish I could remember the title.

No doubt there has been a significant amount of time, money and devotion put into that shot.

I'm just asking myself, what the market is for these kind of images?

While I can see when wet puppies are hung up to dry with cloth pins that could be used for a grooming company or something along those lines.

But what is the market/service that is promoting this image?

Or is it just about (ab)using iStock as an "exposure platform" for someone's art? No that there is anything wrong with that either, I've just seen so many images of stuff that involves tremendous work and I wonder how on earth are they getting their investment back? Unless these image sell like cupcakes.

Looks like a Fringe Festival performance of Midsummer Night's Dream.

I think this is all about giving IS an image that appeals to fantasically hip young designers - who use the POTW as wallpaper on their Macs, and then buy the images they actually need for their assignments. 

Really cool but as mentioned I wouldn't place a lot on recouping the money via stock sales on something like that. Especially micro.

 Really liked the video, thankyou. The potw however doesn't do much for me just doesnt work for me (not that I could do better .
 

Somewhat less cynically - IStock has obviously become a way to get exposure and promote clearly non-microstock work.  By playing along,  and approving photos that might never actually sell (and in some cases don't even meet the guidelines IS imposes on actual microstock)  IStock gets some cool new imagery for their main page. 

Possible use for these sort of images: Painting supply company, Pantone color matching software advert, Print shop advert (if you come up with it, we can print it), etc, etc.

Still, high potential in the RM market.  I can't imagine that much work to sell just to a few buyers, also because the style is very remarkable, so it's not like my stethoscope on white.  The fun part is that it may sell more than my stethoscope anyway!   

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