I Just Want to be Corbised, Is That So Wrong?

Part of my job sometimes involves sourcing photographs from places like Corbis. If you are not familiar with Corbis, it is a stock imagery house where you can search thousands upon thousands of photographs and illustrations for the purpose of buying the rights for various reasons - marketing or advertising materials, presentations, etc.

The times where I have to search Corbis are the happiest times of my job. You see, I love Corbis and can admit that I am obsessed and fascinated with it. There are other stock imagery services (Getty Images, Istock for example) but Corbis is by far the best. The images are slick, the locations are beautiful and shiny -- It's a beautiful shiny happy world, this Corbis world. To spend any amount of time searching for images on Corbis just makes you happy and brightens your day. It's like taking a cigarette break, or a short walk through a garden on a sunny day. It's a fantasy world. It's like Ikea.

[Example above of the typical "people" photo you find on Corbis.]

The models on Corbis are also slick and beautiful and shiny. Seriously, try for yourself: type in "beautiful people" in the search field and Corbis will spit back thousands of photos of beautiful people, often in shiny beautiful places - the beach, a green field, a gorgeous home. It's like a Mentos ad.

[This photo I found by typing in "beautiful." He certainly is. But the liquid spilling down his face and chest? Let's not go there.]

Even the ugly people featured on Corbis are really beautiful people wearing makeup to look ugly.

[
Above is a photo from my search of "ugly people." It's almost like ugly people are not allowed on Corbis!]

An added bonus of playing with Corbis is when a random, mislabeled photo makes it into your search results. Like this image below -- it showed up while I was searching for "business success."

[WTF??]

As I said, I'm a bit obsessed with Corbis. I wish I was a professional Corbis searcher -- I wish all I did 8 hours a day, 5 days a week was search Corbis for images for people. It would be joyous. (Ironically, several years ago before I discovered what a magical place Corbis is, I was asked to interview for a PR job with them. I declined the opportunity because I had just moved to Portland and didn't want to move again to Seattle. I wonder what would have happened had I gone for it. )

The other thing about Corbis is that I'd love to be a Corbis model. I'd love to be in one (or several) of those group photos, making an impossibly happy face like these people below just so my photo could be used in some corporate annual report or keynote address at some annual convention.

[I want to be in this photo. Not sure why; I just do.]

PS - I'm name dropping Corbis' name so much in this post because I'm hoping some bored Corbis executive decides one day to Google or MSN Search "Corbis" to see what comes up and this entry will pop up near the top of the results. So Corbis, if you happen to be reading this, put me in touch with one of your photographers and hire me as one of your shiny happy models. I want to be a part of your beautiful world.