You would think that after 8 months, I wouldn't be so surprised by the luck I have in discovering the sites/ artists behind the stickers I find. Obviously I've had plenty of things I couldn't find through my simple Google searches but for the most part I've had far more success than I thought I would. My friends have even mentioned their surprise with the amount of stickers that I managed to uncover the stories behind over these past couple of months. Some times it's just having enough of the photo in focus that doing a ridiculous zoom into the image allows for enough resolution to make out the website hidden on the side of the sticker. Other times I'm just lucky to have a different exposure of the sticker that I can use that to find out more about it. And then there are the times, like tonight, where you just need the right combination of keywords and patience to find it.
When I decided to use this photo, I admit that I wasn't expecting to find anything on it. I just kind of liked the idea of a smoking wolf with a camera. Kind of brought to mind the idea of old school journalists, like those in His Girl Friday. Wise cracking, fast talking journalists who are out to get the scoop before every one else and willing to do anything to achieve this goal. Or if you want a more modern interpretation, the idea of paparazzi stalking their prey for a pay day. And while I loved this idea of the image, it was the phrase below it that kind of threw me. I guess it could be a word of warning against these dangers, that you needed to "stay alive" in this preying culture, but that feels like a stretch. So after a couple of failed attempts on "wolf with camera sticker," I thought it wise to try and see where the phrase took me. Ended being a good decision on my part because after much scrolling I happened to catch sight of a tiny version of the sticker in my Google image search. Turns out a big reason I wasn't having much luck looking for this sticker with my original searches was that I was looking for the wrong animal. The artist behind this particular design is Photocoyote, so not a wolf. But even though this brought me to their website, I still wasn't sure I had the right thing. True it still used the "Stay Alive" with a coyote for the logo, and honestly how many people would use this particular combination. On the other hand the styles of the works presented on the site and the sticker I found didn't quite mesh for me. The designs/prints on the site seemed to really be after a sense of realism with the subject. The animals, musicians, and pop culture references throughout the collections all were immediately recognizable and don't feel to be in the same vein as a kind of goofy coyote cartoon. However after much patient digging into their old Facebook photos, I was able to find my sticker. From what I can tell this particular version of Photocoyote started to get used back in 2011 and has quite a few different iterations over the years. I have to admit that despite my reservations on whether or not this was the same artist, I was truly impressed with the pieces. From what I can garner after looking through the collections and the different pages, the artist seems to be based in Seattle which clearly has influenced their work. And I come to this conclusion not only because they have Seahawk players in there. There is quite a reverence for music and nature throughout the collection, which isn't something that is particularly unique to the Pacific Northwest but are things I do tend to associate with that area. I also really enjoy that sense of Pop art that their work gives off, with the vibrant colors and different patterns in the shading. I think that the bright colors are a great contrast to the fairly impressive realism of the drawings, truly capturing your attention. So whether it's with their colorful prints or their unique sticker, Photocoyote certainly has created some captivating work over the years and I'll have to keep my eyes out for more from them.
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Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
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