'Stock Photobomber' injects reality, hilarity into unreal world of stock photography

LOS ANGELES, California --  You can spot them from a mile away, bad stock photos.

You know the ones.  They have fake looking people doing fake looking things in the most fake looking scenes.

But what can you do?  They are ubiquitous.

Advertising art director Matt Vescovo knew what he wanted to do.

“I can no longer sit idly by as the phonies and fakes of the world go unpunished,” wrote Vescovo.

After a 20 year career Vescovo estimates he has seen “845,742,923,012” stock photos and he says his reaction has remained consistent as the years and images pass.

“I experience the same uncomfortable feeling I have when a bank teller asks me with a forced smile, how my morning is goin' or when I eat soy based meatloaf,” wrote Vescovo.  “It’s not simply that my teller’s greeting and the meat substitute are fake, it’s how hard they pretend that they’re not - that bothers me.”

Enter Vescovo’s alter ego, The Stock Photobomber.

“With Photoshop 6.0 and my own raw emotion I give stock photos what they are missing... a soul,” wrote Vescovo.

The ad man selects the best/worst stock images he can find and then inserts himself right into them with genuinely hilarious results.

Vescovo’s social media accounts featuring his before and after photos are regularly shared online by fans and soon-to-be fans.

“Initially my crusade started as a photoblog on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, my friends who are younger than I am told me it went viral whatever that means,” hewrote.  “It was featured on Reddit (3 million views) Buzzfeed (1.5 million views) Huffington Post, College Humor, Playboy.com, The Telegrapher, Adweek, Bored Panda and The Laughing Squid.”

Now Vescovo wants to take it up a notch.  He’s launched an online crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to raise $24,000 to publish a coffee table book.

If he can pull it off by October 1st he promises to deliver the book to backers and fans by March of 2016.

It’s all part of his one-man-quest to ‘inject reality into the unreal world of stock photography.’