I write a lot of articles about celebrities, and I always like to illustrate them with a picture of the person I’m talking about.

I could just grab the first picture I find on Google and claim that I’m using it under the fair-use doctrine, but I’m not so convinced that would hold up in court, and as a lawyer, I’m a bit of a stickler for following the law to the letter.

So, instead, I typically follow a two-step process:

Step 1: I search for a picture of the celebrity which is available for free under a Creative Commons license.
Step 2: If I can’t find a free picture, I buy the rights from a stock photography website. (This is surprisingly cheap by the way — I’m not sure if most writers realize this, but you can often buy non-exclusive rights to an image for just a buck or two.)

These days, I rarely ever get to step 2 because there are just so many free pictures available. (Which also probably explains why the paid photos have gotten so cheap.)

But here comes the really strange part of all this. The vast majority of the time that I find a Creative Commons picture of a celebrity, it’s attributed to the same photographer: Gage Skidmore.

When I first started noticing this, I didn’t think it could really be just one person. How could one photographer be responsible for nearly every celebrity and politician’s photograph on Wikipedia? I assumed that “Gage Skidmore” was a company or possibly even a running joke among photographers who didn’t want to take credit for their photos.

I was wrong, though. It turns out Gage Skidmore is a real person, and he became one of the most widely-distributed political photographers of all time before he even moved out of his parents’ house.

How Skidmore Found Success

In an interview with Pricenomics, Skidmore explained that he started taking celebrity photographs at San Diego Comic-Con when he was 14, then branched out to political photography beginning with Rand Paul. In the early years, he had his parents drive him from one state to the next taking photos of Paul on the campaign trail.

His passion for photography continued when he was in college, and he began to make a name for himself as a political and celebrity photographer.

Skidmore is an incredibly skilled photographer, but the biggest factor to set him apart was the fact that he released all of his photos under the Creative Commons license. For him, photography was a hobby, not a career.

Because of these permissive licenses, his photos spread like wildfire. They ended up featured in major magazines like the Atlantic and being used on candidate websites, including Donald Trump’s. His amateur photos ended up being used in all sorts of places that would traditionally have only used professional photography.

The permissive licenses are also why I ended up using so many of his photos and why you’ll frequently see his name on an unimaginably wide variety of websites. According to Wikipedia, his photos are estimated to have been used over one million times. (And Wikipedia itself uses a ton of his images.)

Interestingly, by releasing all of these photos for free, he ended up landing plenty of paid work. Wikipedia lists several major magazines that have commissioned Skidmore’s work, and his business website boasts an impressive list of clients.

What started as a hobby became his career, and in the process, he completely disrupted the world of political and celebrity photography.

About Benya Clark: I’m a lawyer turned writer, focusing on sobriety and mental health. If you enjoyed this article, check out my newest project — a weekly newsletter of essays on sobriety.