American newspaper photographers know it as “free-art” or a lessor used “evergreen art.”

These are the filler images that you see on the inside pages of your newspaper that don’t really tie-in to a print story. Free-art images are typically stand alone photos that can take up space for the sake of taking up space. Newspaper photogs, FYI, tend to cringe whenever their editors ask them to aimlessly drive around town looking for these images too, simply because they would rather be shooting something of substance that might be considered more journalistic in nature.

The barbershop is what I call “video free-art.”

I interned in the Interactive Media department of the McClatchy’s Fresno Bee over the 2007 summer. In between assigned MOS videos and shooting one-minute movie reviews and teaching some staffers how to white-balance their Canon video cameras I found this little barbershop a few blocks from the newsroom in downtown Fresno.

It was a tiny three-chair shop that had infinite character in its people and decor. Luckily the owner allowed me to shoot for a few hours stretched across two days. A quick edit later and you have “video free-art” for a newspaper Web site to run and tease on the front page of the print edition.