Hard Negotiations In The Office Lobby Finds Business People Fighting With Each Other In A Cloud Of Dust

Dust cloud with arms, fists and legs sticking out as executives engage in a cartoon like fight. Businessmen fighting pics. Business Fight It Out In A Cloud of Dust And Debris In A Humorous Concept Stock Photo. Picture of people fighting in front of an elevator. A cloud of dust hides most of the people engaged in a funny stock picture of a a cartoon-like fight in a concept stock picture. People fighting pics. Photos of negotiations.

This is one of the one-of-a-kind stock photos that took me two years from idea to execution.

I always thought it would be fun to create a fight scene that looked like it was taken from a Dagwood comic strip where the people fighting were largely obscured by a cloud of dust and debris. This is an effective way to communicate adversity, difficult negotiations, lack of cooperation and so forth and adding a good sized serving of humor as well. Funny stock photos tend to sell well, humor used effectively is a powerful communication tool. This stock picture combines a clear message combined with humor in a way that hasn't been seen in the photography world before. Even better, that message can change with the supplied headline. The image can show negotiations gone bad, address teamwork issues, and serve to illustrate everything from anger management issues to corporate culture problems.

To create this image I first photographed a series of models holding out their fists, hands, legs and feet. I also had them give me expressions of shock, surprise, anger and so forth, though I ended up not using the images of faces because it made the image have a kind of gruesome look to it. I wanted to keep the image light-hearted and funny and really wanted to avoid anything that might be too negative. Next I photographed some powder. It was some face powder that someone had left in my studio at some point. I placed the container of face powder on a white piece of foam core, then proceeded to fire a can of air into the powder with one hand while shooting the photo with the other. Ideally I would have had an assistant working with me, but the day I impulsively chose to put this image together I was at the studio alone. After about a dozen shots everything in my studio was covered with face powder! I was sneezing, my camera and lens was now flesh-colored, and the air was too full of powder to continue.

I uploaded the images onto my computer and used Photoshop to composite the stock image together. It was a simple matter of pen-tooling the models limbs and then placing them in a dust-cloud and using layer masks to fade the limbs in to the cloud. Once I had that part looking good, I looked through my archives for a background. A photo of an elevator I shot in the Buenos Aires airport looked like it would do the job and add yet another interesting conceptual element. The elevator represents up (good), down (bad), and choice. This is my favorite kind of stock image: an effective and unique concept image that was challenging and fun to create!

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