Social Media and Networking Demonstrated By An Influence sphere of a Texting Teenager's Friends.

Social Media and Networking Portrayed or illustrated in a stock photo.

Social media and social networking as practiced through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Buzz, MySpace and other Internet entities are rapidly altering the landscape of communications, advertising and even the structure of our society. With such a huge impact on us all it is important to have images, photographs, that can be employed to help clarify and illustrate the concepts and ideas that are part and parcel of information around such important topics. To illustrate social networking can be a daunting undertaking. This photo is one of a series that I have undertaken to help in that communications task. This social media image portrays a large number of linked friends and fans that together form the social world of sphere of the pictured teenage girl. That she is shown texting adds to the social media implications, and that she is shown seated on a couch indicates that she is engaging her network from home. Other images in the series are indicative of work both in the office and on the go. This stock picture was created for distribution through Blend Images, an agency that specializes in lifestyle and business imagery celebrating ethnic diversity. The young woman pictured is a mixed race girl of El Salvadoran and Caucasian backgrounds. We don't know if she is tweeting for twitter, "friending" someone on Facebook, or instant messaging someone on MySpace, but the phone in her hand clearly demonstrates active participation in some form of social media.

Networks, challenges, and Spheres of Influence.

One of the challenges in creating an image that deals with illustrating "spheres of influence" and large networks of people, is in getting not just a large number of people's portraits, but also in have those people model-released. Luckily I have been creating high-end stock photos for a very long time and was able to go into my archives and find the necessary photos. Then it was a matter of shooting the principle girl in a suitable environment, and using Photoshop to composite all of the elements together. The teenager was photographed sitting on a couch in my studio; the window and ceiling in the background were taken from a penthouse shoot in Buenos Aires, and the portraits were shot all over the world. This is truly an international image! The sphere of friends contains a large variety of ethnic groups with demographics that cover all age ranges from grandparents to young children. This image is even more though, it is also about connection, community and relationships. It is about a new paradigm, a new generation, and a new way of being in a new world.

Creating a flexible and versatile stock photo of social networks and social media use.

With such a wide range of organizations, companies and even individuals needing effective images of social networking and media, I tried to make the image as flexible and versatile as possible. I crafted the photo so that it might work equally well cropped as a vertical for a magazine cover, or cropped in a long horizontal for a double-truck spread. There is plenty of room for headlines, mastheads and titles as well as room for text and body copy. The picture is a positive and upbeat one and the location simple, but upscale. Her clothing is simple, teen-casual and not likely to fall drastically out-of-style. The photo reads well and quickly even at the small sizes often employed on the world wide web. Quick-reading thumbnails are certainly important in today's short attention span and Internet centric world.

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