Awkward Family Photos.com
Since arriving on the web earlier this year, Awkward Family Photos.com has amused, struck a chord and/or sparked an interest from a variety of people. As described at the site: “Let’s be honest– we’ve all got them. At some point in our lives, someone close to us has made us pose for an uncomfortable photo. Well, here’s your chance to share your family’s awkwardness with the world. Submit family photos, wedding photos, vacation photos, engagement photos, baby photos, etc! …Although this site is all about having a sense of humor, our intention is not to be mean-spirited. This is a celebration of awkwardness. ” Recently I caught up with Mike Bender, who along with Doug Chernack co-founded the site. My thanks to Bender for his time.
Tim O’Shea: You just finished up the Awkward Family Photos book for Three Rivers Press, is it still on target for a May 2010 release? What was the biggest challenge in compiling the book?
Mike Bender: Yes, the book is still on target. The most challenging part of putting the book together wasn’t so much finding the photos, but making sure they were all cleared legally and high-resolution enough to meet publication standards. These were things we didn’t fully understand when we started the process, but are fairly complicated. However, the publisher has been great and really helpful in moving these things along.
O’Shea: Mediaweek, in late September, noted that you receive “1,500 submissions a week from around the world” has that rate increased since then or stayed the same?
Bender: No, those numbers you’re referring to came right around the time we had a piece on the Today Show. Now, we are getting close to 200 submissions a day and yes, they’re still coming in from around the world.
O’Shea: How often can you tell the submission is an effort to manufacture fake awkwardness just to get included on the site?
Bender: It’s actually pretty obvious and the photos are always very recent. It amazes me that people will accuse a certain photo of being made for the site even when it was taken twenty years ago!
O’Shea: Has all the buzz around the site helped your respective screenwriting careers or helped you get more interest in your other projects?
Bender: You know, we never went into this thinking it would help our writing careers in any way. I’ve been a screenwriter for almost thirteen years now and had already established myself as a writer. If anything, it provided an escape from film and the immediacy of the Internet is really refreshing.
O’Shea: Looking at this photo it made me wonder, what is the oldest photo you’ve run?
Bender: That is the first photo we found. We had just come back from a lunch where we had discussed the idea of starting a photo-blog based on people’s awkward family photos. Doug did a search on the Internet and that one popped up in a search. It inspired us to keep going.
O’Shea: How often do you hear from family members that didn’t know one of their relatives posted the group photo?
Bender: Rarely. The majority of the photos we get are posted by someone in the photo who has spoken with their family before submitting. But yes, occasionally that happens and we hear from them almost immediately after the pic has been posted on the site.
O’Shea: Given that so much of the appeal of the photos are the oddity/absurdity (of the situation) [sometimes with the poor judgment of people on display] how do you decide where to draw the line of what you would accept or those that you considered to be photos crossing the line?
Bender: Well, we want the site to maintain a sense of humor but at the same time, keep things family-friendly. We’re not interested in any photos that are in any way mean-spirited, morbid, or just offensive. For example we’ve received funeral photos that we thought were disrespectful and we’ve received many nude photos that just weren’t right for the site.
O’Shea: Have you ever considered (with the 1970s/1980s/1990s era photos) getting those folks to recreate their family photos (a variation on “Where Are They Now?”)?
Bender: No, just because there is something really genuine about when a photo is first taken and if we tried to re-create it, I think it would feel like we were trying too hard.
O’Shea: Do the two of you divvy up caption-writing duties?
Bender: I write all of the captions, but Doug is the one who goes through the submissions and finds the great photos. He sends them to me and I caption and post them. We really work as a team and there’s no way I could write if I didn’t have the material.
O’Shea: Have you had any offers to buy the site from you?
Bender: Without going into any details, yes we have, but at the time, we just felt that we weren’t ready to consider something like that. For us, this is first and foremost about the experience and we try to not to lose sight of that.
O’Shea: Do you see a finite end to the site, or are you enjoying it too much to ever consider moving on from it?
Bender: Not yet. Right now, we’re just looking forward to the book and as long as the amazingly awkward pics keep rolling in, we’ll keep posting them. We do have other ideas of how to branch off of the site and will probably start doing that soon.
O’Shea: Is there anything you’d like to discuss that I did not ask you about?
Bender: Just that we really want to acknowledge that this is a community-fueled site and that without all of the contributors, we wouldn’t have anything. So, we are really grateful for that.