It could convey a hostile, negative, unsympathetic attitude towards America or it could evoke a friendly, positive, admiring attitude towards America, although it would demand a certain amount of vision, or the ability to ‘think out of the box,’ to take this view.
Online photography schools are what many people look for when they want to delve deeper into subjects like this. There is such power in photography.

Dollar bill wrapped in surgical tape

A negative view of America in the current financial crisis, as portrayed in conceptual stock photography

How can it be viewed in these two very different ways?
Well, the surgical tape represents a medical situation, an emergency medical situation.
When it is stuck to a United States dollar it perhaps suggests that the United States – represented by the dollar – is in an emergency medical situation, that it is in such a financial crisis that it has to be ‘patched up’ with surgical tape.

A more positive view of America and foreign aid, as portrayed in conceptual stock photography

Let’s balance this negative view of America by taking a more positive view. Let’s ‘think out of the box’ and look at the photo in a completely different way. Let’s look at it in the following way.
The surgical tape that is stuck to the United States dollar doesn’t suggest that the American economy as represented by the dollar is an emergency medical situation.
It suggests that the surgical tape is sticking the dollar to an object, instead.
What is surgical tape usually stuck to? It is usually stuck to surgical dressings, wound dressings.
What are these wound or surgical dressings usually applied to? They are (obviously) usually applied to a wound, to a cut or deep abrasion. In other words, they are usually applied to something that is hurt.
Ok, let’s suggest that the dollar is a wound dressing, a surgical dressing, and that the surgical tape will be used to stick it to a hurt.
What hurts does America stick dollars to? Quite a few things. Poorly-financed, friendly foreign intelligence agencies springs to mind.
However, America also sticks dollars to other causes, and they include entire foreign economies that have been hurt, not just poorly- financed friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
And of course, it usually sticks dollars to these economies in the form of foreign aid, and this foreign aid is invariably in the form of United States dollars.
This post is a continuation of the post life cycle of a stock photo part 2.

It’s a continuation of my previous post  ‘life cycle of a stock photo‘ in which I published a photograph of a dollar bill stuck with surgical tape to represent the world financial crisis.
A typical real-life stock photo of the financial crisis is a photograph of a stockbroker or share dealer looking at a computer screen which displays a graph or lines of figures which are declining.
The problem with a typical stock photo is, it’s typical – there are probably thousands more photographs like it out there.
Because of this, there is more competition for your photograph of a share dealer looking at a computer screen (assuming that you took one); there is less likelihood of it being used by a stock photography agency.
At least, this was my reasoning when I created my photo.
Another part of my reasoning was, surely it’s more satisfying to create a kind of image that as far as I’m aware hasn’t been created before.
So really, my photograph is a concept, it’s how I conceived the financial crisis, rather than a real life photograph of the financial crisis, as represented by a share dealer looking at a computer screen .
This kind of stock photography, which portrays a concept rather than a real-life situation, is often called ‘conceptual stock photography,’ although definitions of ‘conceptual’ sometimes vary.
The intriguing question is, which kind of photograph is more likely to sell – the real life stock photo or the conceptual stock photo?
It might be worthwhile researching this, or at least trying to research it, maybe by asking other stock photographers on the various photography forums.
I have an opinion about it, but it’s always preferable to get several opinions.
Whatever the general verdict might be, even if your conceptual stock photo doesn’t sell, at least you will have the satisfaction of having created something that is unique, that is an expression of yourself.
This post is continued in life cycle of a stock photo part 3

One aspect of the world’s financial crisis that some of the world’s leading currencies require emergency attention, and the surgical tape represents this emergency attention.
People who are fascinated by stock photos like this sometimes seek out an online photography degree to learn more. It is neat to learn from each other.
The dollar was chosen because it is the world’s leading currency rather than because the United States is in financial crisis. Other countries are also in financial crisis, but their currencies are not as easily recognisable as the United States dollar.
I could quite easily expand on this basic idea; I could create other images which are more interesting, more subtle and more visually appealing.

Dollar bill wrapped in surgical tape

But for now this basic image is sufficient for my purposes. It’s a starting point, a reminder; it reminds me of the idea and reminds me that the idea can be developed at some future point.