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Stock Photography Sucks

Home pages that best advertise a product or service simply explain what their product is.

Here are a few random examples that do a really nice job explaining what they’re about.

Twitter
Mint Analytics
Rank Forest
Campfire and any other 37signals product

I particularly like this text on Campfire’s home page.

Campfirehomepagetext

Muxtape’s description is short and sweet, “a simple way to create and share mp3 mixtapes”.

The thing that all of these sites have in common is quality copy. Rather than spending paragraph after paragraph explaining all of the features, muxtape’s awesome service is explained in less than 10 words. That shortness is great: it makes it more likely that the words get read and understood.

But there is another class of website that really sucks at explaining what their product is about. Instead of quickly summing up what their product is or even just explaining a few of the benefits, some sites rely on mind-numbingly ridiculous stock photography to sell the idea that their product is popular, exciting, useful etc. Companies that rely on this type of stock photography are stuck in a horrible corporate mindset.

Here are a few random examples. I’m not going to provide links to examples on principle.

crap stock photography

Websites that use these types of images generally have larger fundamental flaws than just crappy stock imagery, but this specific flaw is something that really irks me.

If photos of people are deemed absolutely necessary to market a product, why not hire a professional photographer for a few hours? Certainly any company that has the resources to provide some “enterprise class solution” can afford this.

I’m definitely not a professional photographer and I don’t have the greatest camera ever, but even I can come up with a half-decent image with a little work.

If that expense is somehow deemed excessive, a random employee with a cheap digital camera can produce images that are unique and provide a dose of humanity.

Feeling Deeply Ashamed

These stories of stock images being reused by multiple companies are kind of funny, but more sad than funny.

An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story
Samsung, Dell, and Gateway use the same girl

The best one though?

Apparently if you use Design Patterns…..

Design Patterns

…..you may be at risk for genital herpes.

Oops.

Conclusion

The moral of the story is simple. Don’t rely on low quality stock photography for your product.

In other news, the software I’ve been working on still requires a lot of work, but it’s rounding into shape very nicely. I solved a few interface and usability problems in some unique ways and can’t wait to share some of these details very soon!

Posted on April 14th, 2008 by Chris Papadopoulos.

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Pingback by Stock Photography Sucks | White Sands Digital — April 14, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
Pingback by Stock photography…what’s it good for? at MGH Now — April 24, 2008 @ 9:30 am

Comments

tripdragon @ May 7

Awesome! You were quick and to the point. And most of all did not wine on and on for 9 paragraphs.
And the book cracks me up. ::D
Ben (1 comments.) @ May 9

Nice to read. i always laugh when i see the same stock images over and over again, even in printmedia.
JD (1 comments.) @ May 9

I agree in most instances.
Like I keep seeing this lime hitting water from www.sxc.hu/