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lady in bed with laptopIf ever you've looked up at ads on the subway or at the photos that come inside picture frames, you've probably thought to yourself, who are these people, and why would anyone ever sit like that? or at least something along those lines. Comedian and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (and 2010 Emmy nominee) blogger Sara Schaefer has been honing her expertise on the subject with a long-running blog feature called "Fun With Stock Photos" and it's so awesome that we had to feature it here, too.

"I've long loved stock photos," Sara says, "and I was continually entertained by how bad some of them were." She's tapped into some of the cheesiest cliches of stock photography and assigned them labels like "lady on a bed with a laptop" and "the non-threatening telemarketer" that perfectly match the photos' soullessness.

Her stock photo captions tend to recast their subjects in a dark-funny way, hinting at backstories of relationship problems, stalkers, perverts and the occasional fecophile hiding under the business suits and yoga pants. "One of the things that always gets me is how stock photo collections feel like they are trying to predict what we need," she says. "It's like, 'Bill, we need more pictures of a boss yelling at his employees! And this time, make sure the boss is a woman!'"

After the break, Sara offers words of advice for the aspiring stock photography model and ten winning stock photo selections.

Sara's Five-Step Guide to Making an Awesomely Bad Stock Photo

1. Make sure everyone is overacting.

2. Be as literal in your visual interpretation as possible.
Example: To show a man with a six-pack, put an actual six-pack of beer under his shirt. TRY REALLY HARD TO BE CLEVER!

3. For models: Find the genre that fits you best.
Are you a goofball? You may be better suited for a humorous infographic about office etiquette. Is your smile filled with smug superiority? You belong in a pamphlet about getting your colon checked.

4. Remember, just because a picture can speak a thousand words, yours should be as obvious as possible.
Want to show that someone is busy at work? Make sure you wrap them up in a phone cord and have pencils and computers flying around them. Make sure their face looks suuuuuper overwhelmed!

5. And finally, just to make sure you've got all the bases covered, create stock photos of anything and everything you can possibly imagine!
You never know when someone is going to need a picture of a girl dressed up like a cat in a cubicle on the moon.