21 Reasons Why Stock Photo Sites Make Me Cry
Do you get frustrated from the ludicrous photos you find on many of the large stock photo sites? Have you noticed that their photos were shot for advertising or corporate collateral and not for training and education?
Until publishers and photographers understand that an important segment of their customers require photos that feel realistic, we’ll have to suffer through futile searches and wasted time.
For some people, the solution is to shoot original photos for every project. But many of us don’t have the time or budget for endless photo shoots. And although stock photos made specifically for training purposes are a great solution, like the people cutouts from the eLearning Brothers and eLearning Art, they can’t cover everything we need.
So here are 21 reasons why most stock photos sites make me cry. I could write 50 reasons, but no time—I have to get back to searching for the right photo.
- Most stock photos feature people at work who are ridiculously happy. (How much fun can it be to hand someone a folder?)
- Most of the models look directly at the camera instead of performing an action. (What was the photographer thinking? )
- I have to spend hours in Photoshop covering up cleavage, so clients will think the photos are appropriate for the workplace. (I use Photoshop’s cloning tool to replicate the fabric texture).
- There is not enough diversity in age, race and ethnicity. (See next.)
- I have to regularly swap heads and bodies to make my courses sufficiently inclusive. (I find this to be tedious and kind of gross.)
- There are too many unrealistic photos of women at work in stiletto heels. (Their feet must be killing them by now.)
- There are too many unrealistic photos of men wearing slick suits and ties. (Have they never heard of business casual?)
- Too many people have extremely neat desks in spotless white rooms. (Has anyone heard of using props?)
- Sometimes they use 16-year-olds to play the part of adults. (I guess you can pay them less.)
- The $1.50 photos are the size of a postage stamp. (Why bother even selling these?)
- The sites are flooded with people shaking hands and giving out business cards. (The world isn’t one big conference, people!)
- When I search for illustrations, I get Gumby-type people with no faces. (What planet did they come from?)
- All carpenters and electricians wear yellow hard hats. (Not everyone works in a construction zone!)
- All healthcare workers, including nurse’s aids and technicians, have stethoscopes around their necks. (Even doctors don’t go around with stethoscopes all day.)
- Everyone is talking on flip-type cell phones. (I worry they won’t replace these with smartphones in time.)
- Large groups of people are always crowded around monitors smiling. (When do they get anything done?)
- Computer monitors and flip-charts always show financial graphs. (Not everyone works in sales.)
- People at meetings are absolutely thrilled by the speaker. (How unrealistic is that!)
- There are too many people holding large white blank cards. (Have you ever seen anyone holding a sign at work?)
- All newspapers are folded to the financial page. (More people read news than financials.)
- All adults over 70-years-old spend their days attending picnics. (I can’t wait!)
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I fully agree with the always happy people. Is no one concerned about anything? And I would add (or stick it in with #4):
21. Everyone looks like a model. What happened to diverse body types?
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
Hi Jan,
Great addition! Varied body types.
Connie
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Hannah Durocher Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
I couldn’t agree more–beautiful people are never usable! Stock photo models should be appealing, not beautiful.
Hannah
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Hi Hannah,
I like that distinction … appealing can come in all shapes and sizes.
Connie
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Love it! Just spent a few hours looking for a few images. Search function on the image sites are not that good either.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Glad I could vent for you, Nigel. It was fun.
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This is a constant problem for e-learning projects but I have to say that sites like iStock are a lot better than the Gettys of old where they charged £250 minimum. We could still do with an authentic or realism switch so that searches return people and situations that look like some actual work is being done. There is a fine line though – one recent client complained that some pics we had found on iStock were too messy!
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Hi John,
Yes, iStockphoto is probably a little better than some of the other ones that are more geared toward advertising. Funny about the client complaining about mess. I can imagine that would bother some people. What about a few props, neatly placed?
Connie
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I do think there’s a tremendous market for stock photos where people have a normal range of emotion and expressions (sad, angry, etc.). We create a lot of training on serious subjects (health, crime, etc.) and the big smile stock photos are impossible to use. It would also be nice to see the same model in a series of photos.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
Hi Sam,
Yes, it seems like there could be a big market for more serious photos. I too often work on serious subjects. I often have to use the term “serious” in my search. You CAN find the same model in a series of photos though — see the link to the eLearning Brothers in the article.Thanks for your input.
Connie
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Great list! Perhaps there’s a market here for realstic stock photos? Interesting idea for a company…
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 5th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Hi Cathy,
Yes I think there is. Any entrepreneurs listening?
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ugh, i just went through this for some eLearning I was building. How about just some neutral expressions? How about wearing clothes that fit? I had the hardest time finding someone who could represent senior management that either wasn’t wearing a 3 piece suit or wasn’t 25 years old.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:21 am
I hear you, brother. And that 25 year-old could have been 16! Let’s weep together. Thanks, Andy.
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Hah, what a great post! So true. However clients always want to see happy and smiling people in their courses.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:19 am
Hi Tomasz,
Thanks for your thoughts on this. My viewpoint is that I understand many clients want happy people, but a photo of someone concentrating on work or discussing something intently (as happens in the real world) is not the opposite of happy). It just better captures the realism of the workplace. Well, that’s my two cents … thanks for yours
Best,
Connie
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Not to mention, the people who don’t look like they are unrealistically happy have their hands on their heads!!
Oh, and the medical photos are not useful. EMTs need to put on gloves. Nurses are NOT to wear hoop earrings that touch their shoulders- no matter how cool they may look.
By far the diversity is my biggest issue though!
Thanks for compiling this list- made me smile on a Friday morning!
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 10:26 am
Hi Kristin,
I agree with all your points! The medical with the no gloves drives me crazy. Glad to make you smile. It’s fun to write something humorous.
Connie.
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Kristin Savko Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 10:41 am
Humorous, but oh so true!
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:38 pm
I feel your pain, Kristin.
Love this! I second all of them, especially the “happy people” and the lack of diversity. I’ve wasted so much time staring at the results of a stock image search hoping if I stare harder the images will change. (Kind of like looking at the fridge hoping a meal will magically appear.) No dice.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 6th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Oh no! I think I do that too. And I keep scanning the thumbnails, hoping their not true.
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Great points. How about character sets? I have to spend hours to search through photos to find several poses of the same character or to even find several individuals that have the same style photo. Why can’t they group them? Do they think I’ll buy more if I see something else while I’m on their site?
And what’s the with big head people? They make me laugh and gag a little.
Good for a chuckle, thanks Connie.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 11th, 2012 at 10:25 am
Ha! Great points. Yes, why don’t they group the models. I think iStockPhoto has an option for “more like this” or something like that and they cluster them lower in the screen. BTW, for one person in a variety of poses, see the eLearning Brothers link in the article.Thanks for chiming in, Holly.
Best,
Connie
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For a visual take on this see: http://stockingisthenewplanking.com/ where people replicate the stock photos with their own version and upload them. It certainly highlights how ridiculous the originals are.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 11th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Hi Ian,
Funny and so unusual! Thanks for the link.
Connie
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LOL!!!! As usual, Connie, you’ve echoed my (ranting) thoughts… Because of everything you said in #’s 1-11 & 13-21, I’ve opted to use the #12 Gumby-like people. No face on a white background is better than a happy, perky, 16-year old model pointing to a pie chart with dollar signs!
Even if illustrations and photos that instructional designers could use did exist, I’m not sure the search functions of the stock photo sites would allow us to find them. Recently I was searching for images to represent different types of participants; for “know-it-all” the results were very close to pornographic! Who knew?
Thanks again for the great post. Penny
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Connie Malamed Reply:
January 11th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Hi Penny,
Yes, you never know what search term will show up soft porn on these sites, even with “exclude nudity” enabled!
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I create and teach online courses for public high schools, and the stock photos I look through are, for the most part, cheesy and laughable when used with a teenage audience. Smiling, beautiful, white students who look thrilled to be academically engaged? Really? Not to mention, there is a shortage of variety when it comes to photos of teenagers — take a look: they almost all look the same, page after page.
It’s OK to find one or two photos presenting happy students, but more of them should be emotionally neutral and realistically engaged with a typical task, with other students, or with a teacher. Photographers need to spend a few weeks in high schools and study how real students dress, stand, and interact.
As for looks, why is it that when stock photographers occasionally manage to include a variety of races, the models are dressed and groomed as if they’re white? They come across like racial tokens, usually only one or two among a larger group of white models (which makes it more obvious that they’re added for political correctness rather than for realism).
And consider age groups: Even the torn-knee jeans on the teenage models look crispy-new and contrived (And many of the fashions overall are out of date as well as unauthentic). Elderly people look like they’ve just been to the barber or beauty shop. Everyone in an office wears a suit… come on! We need an assortment of ages, races, fashion, and body types — models who are physically realistic, dressed the way they would dress in everyday life, and not as obviously posed.
The few photos that show a wider range of emotions, such as anger, surprise, boredom, etc., exaggerate the portrayal to the point of creating a caricature with overdone gestures and facial expressions. It’s impossible to believe them. And, as mentioned in #2 in the post, why is everyone looking at the camera as if the viewers are close friends? I don’t know these people!
As a result of all of these shortcomings, I end up using photos of animals quite often. A hand-drawn dialogue balloon on a droopy basset hound or surprised cat go much further to appeal to students without insulting their intelligence.
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great discussion!!I am in the process of starting a stock photo site. When I read your comments, i was amazed that I was had the same concept of having more realistic pictures. I thought it would be a niche market.
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Connie Malamed Reply:
February 8th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Great, Rajeev! Let us know when your site is up and running. Best of luck with your ideas.
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