Everywhere Brazilian photographer Ferando Martins, head of Brazil’s Câmera Clara Photography Studio, looked he kept seeing the same face. Jesper Bruun, a native of Denmark, was everywhere. He was a tourist in Australia, a rockstar in France, a family man in Bolivia. He and a young woman were customers for Banco do Brasil and he is also pictured as a call center worker for Deutsche Bank. Martins’ customers seemed to prefer using images of Bruun rather than images Martins could produce.
Martins calls Bruun the “the world’s most downloaded man,” and he decided to travel to Denmark to try to learn Bruun’s secrets. See this
video of the odyssey.
But, Who Is The Most Downloaded Man?
I got to wondering if Bruun really could be the “world’s most downloaded man” when no one knows his name. Of course, we must remove politicians, sports stars and entertainment figures from consideration. Their pictures are downloaded frequently because they are known for their accomplishments. The only accomplishment Bruun might be famous for is being able to look good in a picture. His name is definitely not a household word.
I have no doubt that the world’s most often seen model lives in Denmark because that is the home of Yuri Arcurs, the “world’s most successful microstock photographer” who licenses over 10 million individual image uses per year. In addition to Yuri there are a number of other very successful Danish photographers who have learned from Yuri and follow in his footsteps.
So I contacted Yuri. Had Martins done the same before he made his video he would have learned that while Bruun is one of Yuri’s regular models, images of him are not the most downloaded. The top two male models are Ole R or Rodrigo R. At the moment Yuri’s staff is still counting to determine who is actually number 1.
I did a quick check of some of the top downloaded images on iStockphoto and found
11 images of Ole R. Collectively these 11 images have been downloaded more than 59,700 times from iStockphoto alone. Since only a small percentage of Yuri’s total downloads are from iStockphoto, and these same images are on many other site, these 11 images alone have probably been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Just one of the 11 has been downloaded from iStockphoto more than 12,000 times. On top of this Yuri currently has a total of 488 images of Ole R. in his collection.
When Yuri’s staff finishes the count they plan to file a claim with Guinness World Records on behalf of their top female and male models. It is highly unlikely that any model who hasn’t worked for Yuri Arcurs will come close to beating the record. At this point Yuri’s team doesn’t have any idea who the top female will be.
For photographers the important lesson is that a huge number of the people interested in paying to use images are very happy to use the same image someone else has used as long as it is (1) a good image; (2) can be found easily and (3) is available at the right price.