Fortunately or unfortunately, my Cordwell Aero Aviation web site has a stock image library of aviation photographs, all created by me.  This works well for me, the photographer, because every day I can go out a shoot images, its something I like, there’s an undeniable passion for the aviation involved and I earn money from it.

However, there are a few disconnects here. Firstly the stock library business has taken a whole heap of work away from photographers.  Secondly, now everyone who owns a camera is a photographer, or thinks they are.  Point of fact I started my library because I couldn’t stop the flow of lost work, could not turn back the tide or moved a mountain or two.  Therefore on the premise if you can’t beat the system, I’ve gone along with it.

The really big but is the problem with the term “generic” which applies to most library images, even specialist photographers must inevitably produce generic work because there is no market for the images prior to having created them.  Within this generic terminology is the premise that not all images are created equal or suit every application, rightly so.

Then comes the question of selection, who selects the image that is employed to drive a particular web site, product or brand. Well, for my money if a sink in my house springs a leak I get a plumber in, a mechanic to fix my car, a doctor to prescribe drugs and so on.

The digital age has made the accessibility of potentially useable imagery very easy and more importantly, by absolutely anyone, no qualification needed, just a credit card. Essential truth is: get it right and the picture helps the document, or web site, work for you. Get the picture wrong and it will and subconsciously and insidiously eat away at your business worse thank trojan virus.

What qualifications are required to select an image from a stock library?   Who chooses, how does it affect the marketing strategy for businesses worth millions of squids.  The digital age has made it too easy, too accessible, too wide a choice and it is important that we recognise the loaded gun that buying stock library images is.

It happens on a minute by minute basis world wide. Photographers once briefed accurately made that qualified choice for individuals and businesses and now predominately the choices are made less able well motivated executives and the results are visible on millions of web sites around the world.

And theses are just a few reasons to think twice about using stock images.

1.    Your competitor or, even worse competitors, or disastrously worse a pornography site (it happens), may be using the image too.

2.    Unless you have a stratospherically genius designer, you will always be compromised by matching your service or product to the photograph,
not the other way around. And the Designer won’t be cheap to employ, he can’t afford to look cheap.

3.    You will loose the the originality that comes from the character of your business and assumes that of the photograph.

4.    You will inevitably use stock photographs from different sources or creators and they will not have commonality. This effort sacrifices consistency
in your companies perceived abilities and destroys the confidence your clients place in your services.

5.     By the time you spent a day or two selecting the stock imagery, paid for releases for multiple usages and file sizes, retouched and altered the
image in an attempt to match your other photographic content you will have paid more than commissioning your own specific imagery.

6.    Sacrificing the opportunity of creating original photographs about your company by using stock images is a fantastic marketing resource
squandered unnecessarily.

7.    Predominately, stock library images are perceived as cheap, a product of the digital age, and by associations, the dangers are all too apparent.

8.    There will never be precisely the image you need, compromise will always be a necessity.

9.    You may get lucky, the image may go unnoticed, it might very nearly fit with the other images, it’s almost in focus, the colours are very close,
the background nearly fits, what was really required was a night shot but who’s counting, the effects can be minimised and the gamble very
nearly paid off. But not quite the result you had in mind. So close, so far.

10.    The motivation to your staff to have them included in photography and the confidence you have shown in them to be part of the company picture
will be an advantage lost.

11.    The chance to make a statement has gone, the chance to work with some great photographers has passed.

12.    Stock library images can look exactly just what they are; of the peg solutions. How does that fit with the service you sell to your clients?