Searching for the Anti-Stock Photo
DLB ponders: Where do stock photos come from? What do they say about us?
Slate has a thought-provoking article this week on how stock photography companies try to predict what kinds of pictures journalists and designers will need several months in advance. It’s interesting to read about the various trends that are revealed by studying the rise and fall of search terms like ”Christmas” and “woman” and the subjects of images, like people staring off in the distance or children in the foreground. This kind of information is probably more useful to cultural anthropologists than designers, but it did get me thinking. Like the author of the piece, I hadn’t given much serious thought to how stock photos are made.
At DLB we prefer to make our own images whenever possible, but sometimes the job calls for real people—good looking, expertly shot people. Then it’s off to the web to slog through thousands of photos hoping to catch the white whale: the perfect image. This is almost always a pain.
Trying to find the image that matches the one in your head is a struggle. Perhaps I haven’t matured enough to think of the process as though I’m making a collage. I want too much control. I constantly feel like I have to compromise when I accept someone else’s image.
We’ve concealed his identity to protect ourselves.
But who is compromising, here? After all, somebody made this image for me to use. This bothers me even more than the mismatch with my mind’s eye. Something is being sold to me before I get to sell it. The hours I’ve spent confronted by so many politically correct, saccharine, pretentiously artistic images have led to serious existential questions: Whose vision of the world is this? Are these photos marketed to me (the designer), to my client, or to our audience?
I’d like to think we’re more than a middleman in this process. As my wise colleague Scott Francisco taught me: design is a form of leadership. We’re the gatekeepers. Which is why I’m grateful for places like istockphoto, which exist as the long tail of stock photography.
In contrast to outfits like Getty Images (mentioned in the article) who create their own content and charge a king’s ransom for it, there are plenty of little guys out there whose wares are user-submitted (which we like) and dirt cheap (which we really like). Sure, there are plenty of professionally shot, choreographed images on these “microstock” sites, but I feel like I have a better chance of finding images that are decidedly un-professional. Not in terms of their technical quality, which is just as good. What I mean is that someone took a picture of something—not because it was their job to do so— but because it was something they simply found joy in doing.
When I’m cruising stock photos for DLB, I try to look for images like those. They feel more genuine, like something that is found rather than made. When I’m out there, bleary-eyed, pouring over waves of too-good-looking business types and artsy snaps of lone trees, that’s what I’m after: the anti-stock photo.
| Tagged with: | Design, Design Leadership, Stock Photography, Trends |
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Comments on this post
1.
I’ve be a happy boy if you could tell me a good site to find ‘non stock’ stock photography. flickr is okay if you want to spend ages looking through the collection holiday photos to find something interesting and then make do with a cc license. The microstock agencies filter out the good photos and leaving only the bland looking ‘pretty’ pictures behind, and the trendy macrostock collections cost an arm and a leg. I sympathise with your bleary-eyes.
2.
It’s always a quality compromise issue. How much does it cost to produce your own images?
3.
Steve G.–
I confess, I don’t have a good answer to the stock photo problem. I do think that it’s an interesting paradox for designers, which is the reason why I brought up the subject.
In my experience, there is ‘non stock’ content out there to be found, but there’s certainly no easy way to get to it. I can see potential solutions coming from the bottom-up (tagging) or from the top-down if someone is willing to curate towards that market. Unfortunately, it seems like the only way to find it for the time being is to keep digging.
Steve S.–
As for producing your own images, I think it’s extremely difficult to generalize an answer. I honestly don’t know about photographs. We’ve never hired any photography ourselves. If we can get away with it, we draw or model what we need.
I’ll try to follow up on your question, however, for a future post. It would be nice to know.
—
Thanks, Steve and Steve, for your comments.