An embarrassing thing happened to officials down in Australia and New Zealand, which it turns out are two different countries. They printed booklets about tax and housing programs, and both pamphlets showed the same happy family on the cover.
Oops! So where are you happy folks from, anyway? Australia or New Zealand? Actually, they’re from the U.S. It seems the shot was taken here, and a stock photo agency sold it. For all I know, these guys are smiling just because they aren’t in Australia.
I don’t think anybody was trying to pull a fast one. It’s not like they Photoshopped Sydney’s Opera House behind the kid or anything. But surely there are families in those countries, and they must smile sometime, no? This reminds me of that airline in Nepal that illustrated a tourism poster with a photo from Peru…
A New Zealand Government brochure on the 2008 Budget, which uses a stock photo of an American family from a U.S. stock agency, is seen in Wellington, June 16, 2008. REUTERS/Anthony Phelps
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Yes, there are happy families in New Zealand and Australia, and you can hire a photographer to take a picture of one for about $200, including photographer’s and model’s fees. You can buy a royalty-free photo at istockphoto.com for about $10.
And there’s no guarantee that the family is American: the website may be, but stock photo companies buy pictures from everywhere.
A far more important question is: why is that baby wearing a toupee?
- Posted by CharleneThey have grass in Australia?
- Posted by KSo… In an ad about the new budget… They spent money on buying a photograph they could have just posed for themselves…. I wonder if they could have saved the money to make the ‘fast broadband internet’ faster still….
- Posted by Bandage