Beware of Stock Photography, or: The Devil Horns Made Me Do It

Stock photo sites can be a real boon to designers tasked with creating materials without the benefit of a photographer. Of course, in the wrong hands stock photography can be hilariously awful. In fact there are whole web sites devoted to their awfulness. (Try here for starters. Or here.) I always get a chuckle out of these kinds of things when I see them, especially the photos that are heavily edited. The ones where a model's arm is removed so another arm can be added holding Dove soap, or Vidal Sassoon hairspray, or a Sony laptop. 

Rarely, though, do these disasters arrive gift wrapped on my doorstep. Last week I received an announcement in the mail for a local worship group. To be fair, I won't name the group since this post is not really about their design skills but about the practice in general. The ad features a number of different elements, but one really stuck out.

Notice the above shot of a "Praise Party," which features, at first glance, some God-fearing Christians rockin' out to some Christian rock at a concert. Look closer, though, and you'll see one of those silhouettes is throwing up some devil horns, the universal symbol for metal. Go to any metal show and you'll witness a sea of the raised gesture. I've covered hundreds of metal shows — from wimpy metal like Disturbed and Korn to full-blown metal devastation like Slayer, Sepultura, Suffocation (and that's just the "S" bands) — and most metal fans know the sign is for legit metal only, the metal with evil titles and the 666 hidden in the liner notes and the intensity that will make your ears bleed. Some lighter bands have some uninformed fans, though, which is probably why I've seen devil horns at Incubus and Blink-182. To be fair, though, the gesture has been hijacked by almost every "loud guitar band" even though metal purists would cringe. But never by Christians. At least, not that I know of.

Even stranger, the man throwing up the devil horns is also throwing up the sign language sign for "I love you." Devil horns = pinkie and index finger up, thumb tucked in. "I love you" = pinkie and index finger up, and thumb out. So apparently Mr. Christian Concert man is really confused: love on one hand, hate on the other. It's like Night of the Hunter, but without Robert Mitchum in that creepy performance.

In any case, there are many pitfalls and traps with pulling stock photos and manipulating them for purposes which they were not designed. See any good ones, be sure to send them my way.