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Stock photography is a necessary evil. It’s great when you need an image to enhance a concept, but you run the risk of using imagery used by a competitor which dilutes your product or service, and potentially your brand. Here are some tips for using it well when a photo shoot is not an option:

WHAT IT’S GOOD FOR:

1. Conveying generic ideas
Business environments, smiling students,  people working on laptops; these types of images communicate very simple ideas that help to create a general idea of ‘time and place’ for the product or service being marketed. You wouldn’t want to rely on a stock photo to capture a unique offering like a specific service or product.

2. Small budget
Stock imagery can be a huge cost savings in the short-term compared to a photo shoot. Depending on the type of imagery you choose, royalty-free photos can be a cost effective solution to bring a design to life.

3. Textures
One really great use of stock imagery is textures. There is a wide variety of vector based textures available through stock websites such as Shutterstock or iStockphoto that can be manipulated and customized quickly. Opting for this kind of stock imagery saves you hours of setting up your own textures.

THINGS TO CONSIDER:

1. Don’t fake it
It rarely looks good to photoshop a product into a stock photo. Your options for usable image compositions are limited and desperation tends to lead people to make some bad decisions around forcing a product or person into a stock image. If you must, be very selective about getting the perspective right and be weary that the lighting on the object or person being photoshopped matches that of your photo.

2. Consistency is the way to go
If you are looking to use stock photography for marketing collateral that will represent a company or brand, it is important to remain consistent in the selection of imagery. Even the most generic stock photos have a style. If you are using stock imagery for a website for example, you want to be sure you select photos that all have similar properties, such as: tone, level of contrast, lighting and depth of field.

3. Consider your target audience
When using stock imagery, it is important to be aware of the demographics of your target audience including ethnicity, age, gender and environment. You want to be sure your photo speaks accurately to the person engaging with it.

My last piece of advice, and probably the most important – Avoid the hand shake.

We’ve all seen it. The generic power hand shake of a successful business deal. Any designer who has had to pour through a stock site can tell you there are some cliches not worth pursuing; especially when it comes to imagery for IT and technology companies. There can even be certain models that tend to show up frequently. Beware of the following:

 

 

design · photography

Posted by Katie Rutherford