Stock photography has officially achieved critical mass in the absurdity department. I grant you, stock photographers are as much instruments of the marketplace as any other professional service provider and are therefore subject to the whims of the focus groups, the advertising big wigs, the ebb and flow of the dollars that keep them knee-deep in lenses and strobes. But when was the last time you saw a product advertised by a stock photograph and thought to yourself, That could totally be me in that picture?

There you are, holding a slice of kiwi in front of each eye, like any normal Tuesday, right? You look so happy about this kiwi you could make a coke addict jealous. The look on your face is one of such unbridled joy, such boundless euphoria, it would be hard for any bystander not to want your life at that moment.

Dear stock photographers… Quit it!

I’m not going to try to say that pictures of women ecstatically eating salad, men jumping up in the air in business suits, or families in pastel clothing not looking at each other are unnecessary or devoid of value. Quite to the contrary, if the market demands photos of people just about to take a bite of something delicious with a look of drug-induced bliss on their perfectly lit faces, that is what the market shall receive.

No, I’m only saying, really, seriously, don’t we have enough of these yet? Where’s the originality, where’s the inspiration? Where’s the creativity, people?!

The ad agencies are just as much to blame for this, flipping through their iStockPhoto dot coms and their Getty libraries and always choosing the group of conveniently diverse people huddled around a clipboard with blank paper on it instead of something, oh I don’t know, realistic.

Cracked does a phenomenal job of pointing out just how ridiculous and profuse some of these archetypical images have become, in the article linked below. Just a word of warning: there is some coarse language, which is uncommon for my blog, and is the only reason I mention it.

• The 12 Most Baffling Genres of Stock Photo, Explained, via Cracked.com

Have you run across some ridiculous stock photography lately? Do you make ridiculous stock photography? Leave a comment and tell us all about it.

The goal of photography is to capture a moment, an idea, a thought, or an event and suspend it in time. Whether it is journalistic, editorial, representational, abstract, or artistic is not important in reaching that goal. Occasionally, as a photographer is striving toward their singular goal, they unwittingly meet another one.

Such is the case with these amazing depression-era color photographs published by the International Business Times; though they were taken at the time as recordings of events (though demonstrating the aesthetic sense of the accomplished photographer), the social and cultural distance between the depression and today has vaulted these images into pure artistry. They are truly breathtaking; scenes from a past world, a past America.

View the entire set of photographs on International Business Times: Rare Color Photos from Depression Era.

On the occasions that I have people ask me for casual help getting started with their new DSLR, I send them to these same articles as a “primer,” and to save me from repeating myself a lot.

So, without further ado, the most popular and essential articles in three years of Single-Serving Photo:

• Neutral Density Filters
• Mastering the Only Five Camera Settings
• Art Concepts in Photography, Part 1: Texture
• Art Concepts in Photography, Part 2: Composition
• Art Concepts in Photography, Part 3: Positive/Negative Space
• Histograms, Huh?
• Resolution is a Myth: Calculating DPI

I also decided to put this list on its own page. You can always get to it from the “Essential Reading” link along the right side, or share that page with your friends who are getting started.

Even with the best equipment that money can buy, ICC profiles, spectrophotometers, an iron-clad color management workflow, and a high-end monitor, your eyes are the ultimate judges of your work. But eyes, they don’t work alone; you can’t see anything without light, and the quality of the light will have as much an effect on what you see as the color of the print itself.

I got onto this topic after reading Michael Johnston’s overview of his Viewing Station. All these years I’ve been experimenting with lights in my studio space, let’s call it Single-Serving Photo HQ—or, as my friends call it, my bedroom—and I never once thought to write about it.

After the jump I’ll tell you how to dramatically increase your viewing conditions for about $15.

Michael says he uses one of those clip-on Verilux full-spectrum fluorescent setups. When I started down this path, I hadn’t heard of Verilux specifically, but I was sure I wanted to go fluorescent after being turned off by these so-called “daylight” incandescent bulbs that were nothing more than regular bulbs with bluish glass designed to offset the orange light they actually generate. Michael’s entire lamp, which includes the bulb, cost him around $80. We can do better than that.

Get a Bulb

I wound up sampling several compact fluorescent bulbs from 1000bulbs.com and eventually decided upon a 100 watt equivalent 5100k model. Here’s a picture of what it looks like, sort of:

There are perhaps four important considerations when looking at bulbs for your viewing environment.

1. Wattage (or equivalent wattage, when talking about fluorescent)—I like my viewing conditions to be fairly bright, so I went with 100 watt equivalent, but you may prefer to go higher or lower.
2. Spectrum—Get a bulb that is classified as “full-spectrum,” meaning that it doesn’t purposefully exclude certain wavelengths.
3. Color temperature—Anything from 5,000K and up should do fine. I prefer 5,100K, you might go as high as 5,400K.
4. Color Rendering Index (CRI)—This method of measuring the color accuracy of a light source has its flaws, but it’s better than guessing; a higher number is better, 100 is perfect.

A Note About CRI

The Color Rendering Index (CRI) is a measure of a light source’s ability to reproduce color. Those of you mathematically inclined or simply curious can read about it on Wikipedia. This particular system has its detractors, but it’s the system most widely used at the moment, and 1000bulbs.com lists the CRI value for most of its bulbs, especially the ones billed as “full-spectrum.”

The Verilux bulbs that you find in systems such as Michael’s rate around 86 and up on the CRI scale. The bulb I chose scores an 82, which by all accounts should be good enough for any normal person. Some halogen bulbs are rated 100, which is as accurate as a light source can be on that scale, but halogen is expensive, hot, and may be too bright for some people.

23 Watt, full-spectrum, 5100K CFL from 1000bulbs.com: $5.71

Get a Lamp

What good is a bulb without a lamp to screw it into? Perhaps you have a spare lamp somewhere in your house that you can use, but if you don’t, do not despair. I went down to the home improvement store and picked up a simple work light (sometimes also called a painter’s light or a clip light). Here is a pretty basic one offered at Lowe’s; I don’t remember where I got mine.

Simple clip-on work light: $7.48

Clip it onto something, such as your apartment’s fashionably painted structural beams, and away you go!

I actually bought three bulbs, three work lights, and plugged them all into a single power strip so I can turn them on and off with one switch and light my whole computer area. It’s very helpful to be able to lay prints out on top of the printer or on my desk and have the same quality of light everywhere.

You will definitely see a difference in the appearance of your prints as you move them from one light source to another. Nearly every print will have some variation in the way it reacts to light. Some inkjet inks are known to be rather more prone to this change in appearance (which is called metamerism), such as Epson K2 (the inks I use). It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as an artist you need to be aware of the possible ways in which your work will be viewed and whether you are satisfied with the work’s performance.

So there you go. A full-spectrum viewing solution for less than $15.