Did you catch this Forbes online post?

They’re so frustrating for so many different reasons (I commented on one a while back), but for now, just consider the name in the bottom right corner of the photo: Mark Scott is a professional photographer whose stock image was licensed from Getty Images by Forbes for this webpage.

In fact, I wrote him an email to confirm that this was his photo.

It is.

So what’s ironic about all this, you ask?

Well, photography is, according to this post, the second worst undergrad major to go into — yet look at the bottom right corner of each photo in the story and you’ll see that posts like this would be rather more boring without the creative work of freelance and professional photographers, people whose work is also earning income for a variety of people involved in the licensing process.

While there may be all sorts of more or less profitable careers to go into than photography (or religious studies or history or…), judging careers solely based on earning potential seems terribly short sighted, no? And failing to see that the very professions you’re criticizing provide some of the enabling conditions of your own graphics-rich, income-producing website is, well, something more than just ironic.

It’s also something other than ironic that an ad for their own online Business School appears at the bottom of the post, no?