Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Adman Photobombs Stock Photos, Turning Awkwardness Into ComedyMatt Vescovo's latest diversionBy Tim Nudd

The last time we checked in with Matt Vescovo, it was 2003 and he was doing Instructoart—hilarious award-winning graphic-design pieces (some of which ran as animated promos on MTV) detailing how to perform simple activities like doing the hokey pokey, separating groceries on a conveyer belt and removing pubic hair from a bar of soap.

Here's his latest project: The Stock Photobomber.

Vescovo, 45—who worked at BBDO, Cliff Freeman & Partners and Fallon in the '90s before going freelance full time in 2002—uses Photoshop to insert himself into the most silly and awkward of stock photos, making them even more irresistibly absurd.

"I dedicate every stock photobomb to the actors who posed for the original stock photos. You didn't mean to do what you did when you did it, but boy you really did it didn't you," he writes on the Stock Photobomber's Facebook page.

BuzzFeed caught up with Vescovo, who had this to say about the project:

I was in a gift shop and I happened to walk by the aisle where they sell picture frames. I remember looking at the stock photo of the smiley family in a loving embrace they had in the frame and thinking to myself: "They're not a family, they're actors who met 10 minutes before they took this."

It felt a little fake to me and so I thought, "I know what will make it more real, if I'm in there."

The reaction has been pretty amazing, people really seem to like the photobombs. I think photobombing is such a big thing these days and I just happened to take it and add a little twist. I do it all on Photoshop. God bless Photoshop.

Check out more of the photos below.