Dictionary photos and my friend Oscar

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I suppose a lot of us still have dictionaries around the house, though you can now access a number of good ones online. But, back before the internet (yes, some of us were alive then) many people kept this rather large book around to look up meanings of words and to check spelling. Oscar, my ping pong and photography friend, brought a dictionary to ping pong on Monday. This was a 1992 American Heritage Dictionary. Unlike the page I photographed here, the little pictures next to the words were in black and white. Back then, dictionary publishers bought photos for the words from stock photo companies. Oscar submitted many photos to the stock photo people and the dictionary publishers bought some to use. In this dictionary, there are 59 photos that Oscar took. Next to the entry for "aviator sunglasses" is a photo of a man wearing a pair and that is Oscar. Maybe his wife took the photo. I never thought about where those photos in dictionaries came from. Maybe they still buy them that same way.