The Allison Stokke Affair
A few weeks back, a picture hit the Internet. It depicted a pole vaulter named Allison Stokke, and it quickly became a huge phenomenon, for quite obvious reasons. Unfortunately, she’s not exactly happy with all the attention; I can’t say I blame her. Being fawned over my dirty old men online can’t exactly be pleasant. The one problem with the Washington Post article is that it doesn’t show the original picture, which is quite striking. It’s getting harder to find than it was (the photographer is trying to pull it), but here, here and here all currently work. It’s actually a testament to how important lighting, composition and luck are in photography: you can see that in other photos she’s merely pleasant looking, but in that one everything comes together to great effect.
