Fun With Stock Photos- Make Your Own Caption!

At my current job, we use hundreds of stock photos within our courses. Our courses teach about all aspects of the mortgage industry, so we need lots of different pictures for the millions of topics that we cover. For instance, if I were building a course about a broker who just closed a loan and was thinking to himself, "Booyah!" I would put in this photo:



Or if I was writing an example scenario about an intern who has to work his way up to middle management and take crap from all his superiors, I would use this photo:



"I said shave those sideburns, hippy!"

I often wonder if these photos ever get used in other people's courses and websites, or if we own the license on every one of them. Well, last week I did a post on Get Over it Day. While I was at the site, I noticed a few familiar faces. Humor me for a moment and go over to their website real quick (will give you link in a moment). When you get there, look at the photos in the upper right hand corner of the webpage. Pay particular attention to the man at the far right with the snazzy purple tie. Take a few moments to get familiar, then come back here. (view their website here)

Now those are classic stock photos. You can tell because each photo is just oozing emotion. When I saw these, I was pretty sure we had the same ones. I have yet to find an identical match, but I did find something even better. Remember the depressed man in the purple tie? Well I found the same man, same suit, but with a different background. See if you can find any other differences:



You guessed it! We have "happy token black guy in snazzy purple tie." A useful photo for many occasions. So now I wonder how many different expressions this guy made in that same suit. If you ever find any more of him, please be sure to let me know. Anyways, I was amazed to find his alter ego on another website, so I thought I would share.

Here's a bit more fun with stock photos. As you know, many famous actors have look-a-likes for various occasions. When they're not busy looking like famous people, these actors do photo shoots for stock photos. Here is Keanu Reeves' look-a-like, doing his impression of "The Matrix 4: Neo Takes on Wall Street:"



"My name... is Mr. Anderson!"

And we also have Cuba Gooding Jr.'s look-a-like doing his impression of "Crazy Radio stubs his toe:"



The last thing I want to share with you is my all time favorite stock photo. I try to put this photo in about every third page of our courses. If there were such thing as an Oscar for stock photos, this guy would win. This is the Pulitzer of stock photography. This photo can be used appropriately for any and all situations. The expression on this man's face could mean anything. So, enter your own caption in the comments section and see what you can come up with. Feel free to enter multiple times. I love this guy: