At some point in 2009, I decided we needed a photo of some legal highs to spruce up the website a bit, so I grabbed a pack of everything we stocked at the time and half-heartedly arranged them by hue, grabbed our 5 megapixel point-and-shoot camera (typical of the 00's - took about 6 rechargeable AA batteries, used some weird ancestor of an SD card, piss-poor image quality, grain-central) and grabbed a quick snap. That'll do, I must have thought.
Original "legal highs" photo from 2009
And it DID do! Pretty good going actually. I wheel it out every time I've written some content about legal highs that needs an image, it's always been around the top spot when searching for pics of legal highs in google, countless people all over the world have stolen it (without any thought as to its copyright status) because it will clearly suffice for their projects too.
But it's 2015 now - about time for an update. In those six years, gradually every product in the original pic was banned, or otherwise ceased production, or simply fell out of favour and are now no longer relevant. Also, I've taken up photography as a serious hobby for the past few years and as I get better at it, I continue to notice new flaws in the original image - the shit lighting, the lack of sharpness, the clumsy postprocessing required to get it looking half-decent in the first place. So, the other day, I took a new one, featuring a good sample of the popular incense products we currently stock, and here it is:
- Image Name
- Legal Highs, 2015
- Image Description
- A display of several popular legal high incense products/packaging, none of which are restricted under current UK legislation on date of publishing. Products pictured (left to right):
- Annihilation Volume 2
- Armageddon
- Voodoo Gold
- Clockwork Orange Reloaded
- Black Mamba
- Herbal Haze
- Kronic
- Blue Cheese
- Pandora's Box
- Voodoo