Getting 'Tacky,' Having Fun With Photos

Remember taking those tacky, embarrassing pictures with your family that you wish you could forget? One website wants you to embrace these moments and share them with the world.

Darren Garnick of Amherst helped form Tackytouristphotos.com to provide a space for the less-conventional travel photos to shine. This user generated photo site has visitors send in photos capturing their tacky poses, tacky places and tacky souvenirs.

He said that he started the website in 2009 with two friends who share a goofy sense of humor and a love of travel, but were bored of the usual photos taken.

“If you go on Flickr and you look up Eiffel Tower on Google, almost everybody's picture of the Eiffel Tower is nearly identical,” he said.

They much preferred the goofy photos where tourists pretended to lean on the tower or hold it up with their hands. Better yet, maybe a photo of a family member eating a giant chocolate bar or someone getting friendly with a wax figure.

Unlike other user-submitted photo websites, like Peopleofwalmart.com, the aim is to celebrate the absurd and not to mock. Garnick said the influence for his website came from other sites like Awkwardfamilyphotos.com.

The word “tacky” is given a different twist on his website, with the definition leaning towards silly, funny and kitschy. He said they chose the word because it made for better alliteration, because “Kitschy Tourist Photos” wouldn’t have the same ring to it.

“We reclaimed the power of the word,” joked Garnick.

Travel photography had always interested him and he fondly remembers the offbeat photos taken during his family vacations. Silly family moments are celebrated, such as getting “locked up” in Puritan torture device to pretending to iron bars.

He is currently a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker and cannot travel very often now that he has a family. However, his kids and wife have taken on his passion of tacky photography and are always on the lookout for local photo ops.

“Its a really good way to connect with my kids and find some fun photo opportunities together,” said Garnick.

Locally, he said that Story Land in Glenn, NH is a “treasure trove” for goofy photos with the family.

The photo-sharing website allows travellers to connect and share with only a few rules to submit to Tacky Tourist Photos; mainly that the shots need to be appropriate and show the tourist engaging with the environment.

“We are hoping to provide a fun way for travellers to connect with one another and share some offbeat experiences that you just can’t get in the travel guides,” he said.

He said that his website has built a following, including fun-loving photographers right here in Amherst. Jay Hinspeter is one of them and said he likes the world of wacky photography.

“I like to think of myself as a photographer, not someone for holiday snapshots, but there's a guilty pleasure in taking that purely frivolous photo of your kids pretending to scream while standing in the mouth of a giant fish,” said Hinspeter.

Garnick said that he wants to make a coffee table book with these photos, and also produce travelling exhibits at museums and other venues to show off these tacky photos. He has already been contacted by a museum in Tennesee about the possibility of showing an exhibit of the website’s photos.

In the end, it is all about having fun and sharing these goofy life experiences with one another.

“We don’t laugh at the people in the pictures,” said Garnick. “We are celebrating the in-joke with them.”

Find more "tacky" photos at tackytouristphotos.com and on theirfacebook page. Also read Darren Garnick's blog.