How To ID Stock Photography
Author of this post: Katherine Feo | About Blog Authors »
Stock Image? Indeed.
In a recent article on Designobserver.com, Jesse Nivens makes a great point about stock photography: since it’s predicated on a standard business model of supply and demand, it provides images that reflect the dominant worldview in order to sell. For Nivens, this meant a dirth of images portraying overweight individuals (let’s say ‘fat’, unfortunately it produces more results in a search engine), even though the reality is that contemporary American society could stand to lose a few. Others joined in and bemoaned the lack of visibility when it came to finding a range of visually marginalized groups such as wheelchair-users, the unattractive, and the non-tan (British). Apparently, these images aren’t as needed in the world of stock photography because they aren’t aspirational enough to sell products. Trust me, though—plenty of British people buy things all the time. I’ve lived there.
Limited subject matter isn’t the only thing that frustrates designers about stock photography. The design community has had to become adept at using stock footage in lieu of original commissions because of deadline and budget constraints. Considering the pace of advertising and image projection today, both online and in print, the proliferation of stock photography isn’t really a mystery—it allows anyone to acquire decent photos on almost every topic for about $100, all in the time it takes to use a search engine and right-click your mouse.
In this sense, the market doesn’t just dictate the subject of images used, but also the method of production: stock photography is faster, cheaper and more streamlined. The short-term consequence is that the individual collaboration between art director, designer and photographer is sacrificed; the long-term implication is that recycling generic images leads to visual homogenization, which is antithetical to good design.
But does stock photography really threaten good design? I’m inclined to think not. First of all, crappy ad photography existed long before Getty Images online. Mediocrity isn’t a new threat, it’s just been standardized. Online stock photography is simply a newer, faster, cheaper version of what some poor staff photographer would have been sent out to shoot or procure from a stock print fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, there’s always going to be a place for generic imagery in popular print, because advertisers will always need to address the status quo.
Secondly, I’d argue that the type of photograph we now get from online stock sources isn’t a threat to good (that is, innovative, engaging, and individually commissioned) photography because often it looks distinctive—it’s a hard to pinpoint classification, but in my experience usually corresponds to high concept angles, flimsy dramatic staging and a general dated cheesiness, especially when figures are included. Perhaps it’s because the images are collated with easy categorization in mind: for instance, on a recent search for images relating to ‘security,’ I came across countless photos of couples wrapped together in a blanket, smiling, with their eyes closed. Sure, I got the message, but it wasn’t particularly subtle or necessarily one that I would have thought could translate so literally into a photograph.
Stock photography is never going to replace good design because it’s created it’s own market for imagery. It speaks a different language, one that consumers are remarkably adept at understanding.
Take the difference between a commercial and a film—both are fictional, but the commercial seems so much more obviously phony. Is it because people in real life never talk about the side effects of medication while out drinking with their friends? Or is it because the believable illusion that we’ve come to expect in a great film doesn’t need to exist for us to get the message of a 30 second commercial? We’re so trained in the rhetoric of seeing ads that we forgive the absurdity, or maybe just don’t pay attention until the occasional corker jolts us out of our TV stupor (and then gets made into it’s own show, see the recent Geico caveman commercials).
We live in a world that is saturated by images completely disconnected from the reality that they represent. A photograph is a sign that can be read independently from the reality it supposedly refers to. A stock photograph is simply one more extrapolation out—we know that it’s not portraying anything but an idea for a category or concept. It’s not a photograph of an overweight American, it’s a photograph that mimics what we’ve come to expect is the best portrayal of ‘overweight’, and one that is still general enough to take on the multitude of other positive or negative connotations any number of companies will pay to saddle it down with. The caricatures of stock footage must be so recognizable that you don’t reflect on them as real individuals, the way you might in a film, but as the product, service or concept they represent.
As the proliferation of online imagery continues, the gap between the good and the bad becomes a recognizable grand canyon of visual differentiation. I suppose the problem is when, in the same way you might crave a gelatinous plastic wrapped cupcake over a flaky French pastry, our collective palette shifts towards the lower end of the spectrum. Luckily, the same medium that allows for the online hypercommodification of images also encourages the development of independent design platforms such as blogs, online education, and informative websites, each of which help to chip away at our craving for visual comfort food. Because, like I said, we could all stand to lose a few.
