Oh my stock, photos that suck

January 30, 2008

Almost every website with any resemblance of professionalism uses stock photography. Although it is usually very high resolution, it is so often very low in realism.

Do people actually respond to fake, photographs? Only your own testing can tell for sure, but one thing's for certain, if the images on your site are actually unique and speak to your customers, you have an advantage over everyone else.

Here's my favorite examples of the too-stock photography that we see everywhere!

The collaboration

Great ideas come from conflict and discussion, not cooperation. If everybody's happy, then chances are nothing is getting done.

The corporate team

When you take a picture of a bunch of models in business suites, you end up with… A bunch of models in business suites!

The business professional

Hmmm. Just out of college and standing around dreaming. My advice is to stop standing around and get to work.

The customer service rep

If it were this much fun to work in a call center, they wouldn't have the highest turnover rate of any job.

The grunge factor

Nothing says professional like a scruffy face or a crumbling wall…

However, You shouldn't take this as a recommendation to put a bunch of low quality pictures on your site. But, trying to find some realism isn't a terrible thing.

Do this:

  • Show realism!
  • Connect with your visitor!
  • Don't choose a photo just for a pretty face!
  • Choose photos that have some relation with your service!
  • Use only clear, sharp, and high quality photos!
  • Take time when choosing any stock photo for your website. Make sure you can easily explain why you chose that image!

Here's an interesting article about how people in photo's can affect your website's conversions.

Posted by jestep | Filed Under Development, Marketing 

Comments

12 Responses to “Oh my stock, photos that suck”

  1. Robert Gorell on January 30th, 2008 1:10 pm

    This is pure genius. I'm just upset that I didn't think of blogging it first.

    When I see stock photos on a corporate website, I cringe.

    (Disclosure: We've used some pretty bad stock photos before on our blog, but never on our company website — for all the reasons you mention here.)

  2. Michelle Greer on February 13th, 2008 4:08 pm

    My favorite is going to istock, typing in a keyword, and then getting 50 results that have nothing to do with that keyword.

    Photographers should be banned from tagging their own photos.

    Agreed that cheesy stock photos are no good, but finding non-cheesy ones in high res is quite a daunting task.

  3. jestep on February 14th, 2008 9:02 am

    Finding good ones is extremely difficult. It seems like the two options are spending hours on istock or other cheap stock sites, or spending hundreds of dollars per photo on the really high-end stock sites.

    I can always find what I'm looking for on Getti Images, but I usually am not willing to pay their ridiculous prices for them.

  4. Rodica on February 16th, 2008 11:16 am

    Hi,
    I am kind of new at stock photography. I am also selling photos on 5 Royalty Free Stock sites.
    About 5 weeks ago, I opened a new website and I would be very grateful if you would give me a bit of constructive criticism to help me improve and offer what is needed NOT what I want. If you would be so kind to take a look at my website and point me in the right direction, I truly appreciate it.
    I really don't want to copy the big Royalty Free sites, who are extremely picky and expect the best from photographers and pay them $ 0.21 per sold image. It takes a lot of work and time to get a photo ready and honestly, you CANNOT MAKE A LIVING on what they pay us !
    So, please help, but don't hit me to hard, I am a person with feelings ……
    Thank you so much for reading my message and for visiting my website.
    Rodica

  5. troels on March 3rd, 2008 2:16 pm

    So true.

    Whenever I see a site with photos like this, I know it's a dodgy one-man company, trying to appear professional.

  6. Nick - e marketing on March 6th, 2008 10:12 am

    Hi, I am a web developer / designer and often use stock photo sites, and even though i agree that stock photos are cheesy and often don't reference well to a business. (especially one aiming at a local market) .

    One thing i will say is, having pictures with plain backgrounds is extremely helpful when incorporating them into a design. Stock photos with people in are the worst of the kind, vehicle's etc are not so bad.

    A lot of my customers would prefer me to get a stock image of there commercial vehicle and replace their sign writing in photoshop, rather than a low quality image provided by themselves.

    Even when customers insist that they use their own images, when they come into the studio they often effect th corporate look of their site, making it look like a smaller / less professional business.

  7. jestep on March 13th, 2008 10:15 am

    Here's a good one. How may people look like this when studying for a DBA exam?

  8. James Leicester on March 14th, 2008 3:54 am

    Jestep, great blog! I've never actually stopped and looked at stock photography in the way you have mentioned. With your annotations for each photograph, it is easy to see how potential customers could make assumptions about a web-site.

    I've just made a recruitment agency web-site, that is riddled with Stock Photography, now I feel ashamed!

    James.

  9. devx on April 10th, 2008 10:57 pm

    hahahahaha. I too am guilty of using stock images! But sometimes as a web designer, we don't have much choice, since some of our smaller clients provide us with really low quality images. And clients seem to love this type of images, as (in their opinion) it makes them look profesional!

  10. Mr Speaker on April 22nd, 2008 8:10 pm

    Freakin' excellent - and i agree with your suggestions 100%… I started looking up stock photo stuff after reading this excellent (and relevant, promise!) argument against them: http://rawstylus.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/9things/ (the long comment by "bruno"). And after this awesome stock photo photo site: http://stutterstock.wordpress.com/

  11. Jeff Lewis on May 6th, 2008 8:59 am

    I have entire sub-classes of "lifestyle stock photography. There's the Baby Toss, Jumping Idiots, Odd Looking Eastern Europeans etc.

  12. jestep on June 10th, 2008 8:31 am

    I have entire sub-classes of "lifestyle stock photography. There's the Baby Toss, Jumping Idiots, Odd Looking Eastern Europeans etc.

    I'll shoot for round 2 of bad stock photos, and these are some great ones.

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