Remembering Photonica

Doug Plummer blogged recently about trends in stock photography, mentioning the distinctive images (“dreamy photographs of flowers and water”) available for license some years back from a company in New York called Photonica. (Some images from that collection still available through Getty).

Many of the images I purchased for Apple’s iCards program were from Photonica, and those were often the most popular cards. The dreamy quality of the images captured the imagination and inspire people to customize them with their own captions and messages.

One of the most popular images was of a glass heart wrapped in barbed wire. I was so entranced by it myself that I created a little sculpture along those lines which now hangs in my office.

Happy (well, at least thought-provoking) Valentine’s Day!