I have found the worst photographer/artist on Depositphotos.

[telophase]

This dude:

https://depositphotos.com/portfolio-4447003.html?sh=d2cc707a5da02720b38834ffdc3d79c9

Now, his stuff on this first page ("Best Match" sorting) doesn't seem too terribly bad. It's not good, but it's not terrible

Keep looking. He has badly-lit photos of dead mice, lots of badly-lit photos of insects, close-up photos of what is either cowshit or horseshit, mating cats, badly cropped photos of random houses, out-of-focus pictures of Christmas ornaments and terrible, terrible, terrible art.

I'd say it was a bot account--there's 33K+ photos in there--but there seems to be too much consistency. Also, HE'S ON SHUTTERSTOCK. Also on ALAMY

This actually gives me hope: I have long-term plans of pumping out a bunch of partial artworks--i.e., not a full scene of a landscape with dragon and castle and knight, but one of just the landscape, and one of just the dragon, etc.--and uploading those to microstock sites and OH GOD I AM SO MUCH BETTER THAN HIM.

(It's possible Shutterstock, Alamy, and Depositphotos are all owned by the same people, and dude is one of the owners, admittedly...)

edit So Toby and I have discussed, and noted that the account has only been active for a few months, and we also recalled that Dr Neal Krawetz, of FotoForensics, has written about Russian drug runners using his photo tool as a way to pass coded messages about drug drops (post 1, post 2), and it makes us wonder if they're doing the same thing here.

Comments

[chomiji]

There are certainly an AWFUL lot of of industrial photos - equipment, aerial shots, etc. So maybe you're onto something.

I'm not sure I *want* to know what's in the plastic container between his knees on the beach ... .

[telophase]

Yup. Also, the account has been active since 2015, but only has 3-400 pictures from then, and all the rest I spot-checked were from 2018, which says to me someone started an account, uploaded enough photos to get to a point where the site stopped checking the quality of every single one, then started mass-uploading pictures. Maybe most of them are innocuous and only a few here and there are coded, but who knows?

[hunningham]

Wow! It's as if a friend told him "yeah, your photos are really edgy have you ever tried to sell them?" and he took them seriously and uploaded every single photo he had ever taken and then sat back and waited for the cash to roll in.

[thawrecka]

You should definitely put partial artworks on microstock sites! I think that would be a great idea.