Its hard when choosing stock photography for a bigger company to make sure you have a more original photo. As far as more everyday graphics work, most website, or advertising going with stock photography is the best way to go. its fast, convenient, and reliable with a good selection of images. it helps me all the time in my day to day work as a graphic designer. some really good website that i use are http://www.glowimages.com/ and http://www.istockphoto.com. i hope this can help some people out.

Ahaha! Yes, context is very important. But I find it hilarious how an innocent picture can be destroyed with a few words. Hence the popularity of motivational posters.

Kidding about the company, but I did find it to be a huge coincidence.

I sent the link for lulz.

Well, we just took her off our page and put up a new picture. So I’m guessing it’s a different company. But who knows – email me. lol

That chick seems to be getting more popular by the day.

[quote post=”2030″]I could make her the pretty, smiling face of Herpes if I so please.[/quote]

When I first read it, it almost seemed like:

“I could give her pretty smiling face some Herpes if I so pleased”

LOL I had to re-read that sentence to make sure this is not what it said.

This is almost creepy because just today a company I consult for put up a new website and they used that EXACT picture.

I’ll have to link you in private to make sure you are not working for the same place haha.

Good point though. I could make her the pretty, smiling face of Herpes if I so please.

Well, my boss had the idea of putting our pictures on the website but that didn’t fly well with the staff. No one really wanted to have their picture displayed there so the whole thing got dropped and we went with the stock photo.

But yeah. I agree – having real people there instead of stock photo models is always nice.

I agree with Miloš. Clients/readers want to identify with the company/individual – not with the perfect smile and ingenuine appearance of a stock model.

By the way, the article that my photo was in was about teenagers and safe sex. They can take a stock photograph and do anything with it!

While I can see the benefits of stock photograpy for environmental and ambient photos I hate to see it used for individuals. I believe that whenever there’s a face on your web site or in print it should always be a current employee, not some random person. Having real people on your photos helps create closeness with your customers and helps identify people behind blogs and web site(s).

When my company recently re-designed it’s website, they took the time to take pictures of all the principles, so that as you navigate through the site you see pics of the actual people you would be dealing with if you were a client or job applicant. Each area of work we do has it’s own page, with pictures of the relevant people there, not just on our bio page. They ain’t models, but they’re real. The idea came from client suggestions, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback.

I’m afraid you will keep finding yourself in various publications like that for the rest of your life now. So I guess you sort off achieved immortality… ;)

I modeled in some stock photography for a friend a few years ago, and my cousin found me sitting in a tree in the middle of a Japanese newsletter last year.