We Still Need Stock Photography (for Memes?)

There was a time when you could make a full-time living producing stock photography. That changed in the mid-90s with the introduction of royalty-free stock CDs. Digital photography and the rise of microstock created enormous downward pricing pressure on the industry.

Nevertheless, stock photography still satisfies a real need for generic photography at a (too) reasonable price when commissioned photography isn't feasible. Sarah and Allen talk about stock as well as the co-opting of stock photos – like the "distracted boyfriend" – as fuel for memes in this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred.

Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
you're listening to photo shelters. Vision slightly blurred. I'm Sarah Jacobs

spk_1:   0:04
and I'm Alan Moore. Obayashi.

spk_0:   0:06
So, Ellen, what we're talking about today

spk_1:   0:09
talking about stock photography, my favorite. It was kind of a big deal in the eighties and nineties, like people were making a full time living shooting stock, which kind of blows my mind. I used to get as a kid thes thes big compendiums annuals from American Photography or American Photographer.

spk_0:   0:29
Thing is a magazine.

spk_1:   0:30
It was like a source book back in. That's what we called him, got you and the stock photos, I guess back then, I mean, I don't know. I think if we if we really looked at stock photography back then, compared to now, we might think it was all cheesy. But I feel like things got really cheesy around the late nineties. Yeah, stock really got a bad name.

spk_0:   0:50
I think some weird stock is still being created today, still, and I would argue also that, like stock, is still a big deal because so many Mihm's are created from stock photos, which

spk_1:   1:03
is weird. It's weird.

spk_0:   1:05
Why is that weird? It's like it's like a bank of images waiting for jokes. Theo Internet has just utilized it in a way that, like no publisher ever good like, Thank God you know.

spk_1:   1:18
So there's that that famous stock photo Mim off the guy walking with his girlfriend. Kind of looking back at the other girl.

spk_0:   1:27
Yes, it is famous. Now I'm glad you brought this up. It's It's probably I don't know. I know it's still relatively new, but I wanna say that it might be one of the most famous names out there, like with used with a stock photo.

spk_1:   1:43
So first of all, let's talk about let's talk about how cheesy that photo is. When the

spk_0:   1:48
timer took that photo, what do you think

spk_1:   1:50
he or she was trying Thio even illustrate

spk_0:   1:54
the sleazy boyfriend? I know. But

spk_1:   1:56
in what context? With that, like, why would I? What company or individual is licensing that properly?

spk_0:   2:03
That's what That's right.

spk_1:   2:05
I mean, somebody is No,

spk_0:   2:07
Totally. Uh, yeah. Like a woman in sight. I don't know.

spk_1:   2:12
Okay, so So some like jezebel dot com talking about your sleazy boyfriend?

spk_0:   2:17
Yeah, Exactly. Yeah. Okay. What's great is that, um, funny or die made a video around all the photos that were taken with those exact models, and they created an entire storyline about them and about their marriage and about how it fell apart. And then how it very end, like the last straw was him looking back at that woman. It's a great video.

spk_1:   2:42
It was. It was part of a whole sequence, right?

spk_0:   2:44
Exactly. Yeah, Yeah. The photographer is shot. Quite a few photos with that couple.

spk_1:   2:48
I mean, I think if you're gonna go through the trouble of casting three models to be in your shoot, you might as well. Hey, presumably he or she presumably had a storyline that they were falling to shoot.

spk_0:   3:02
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

spk_1:   3:03
which is weird. There was, Ah, Twitter thread recently that was kind of talking about corporate stock of this one company, Saletan, which you might have heard of. It's the the exercise bike that instead of going to the bike at your gym like a soul cycle, you buy this fancy bike for $2000 or $3000. It sits in your house, you plug it into the wall. It connects to the Internet so that you can watch classes from one of your own home.

spk_0:   3:33
That sounds great,

spk_1:   3:34
but the's Siri's of How much is that? I don't suppose you know, 30 60 bucks a month, so it does

spk_0:   3:40
it. Yeah, but now you know, I already paid you already paid 2500 for the bike. 0 2500 by Yeah, I

spk_1:   3:48
can sew. Saletan commissioned a photographer to create a stock library, a corporate stock library, which is pretty common. People want a branded look and feel, and they don't want anyone else using those images. So they'll commission a photographer to shoot a sequence of photos that they'll use for their ad campaign for the year.

spk_0:   4:05
That's a great gig, right? That's

spk_1:   4:06
great gig if you get it and it pays pretty well. But you have a whole you know, you have a creative director that you're working with a company. You presumably higher your assistance and makeup artists and stylists, and you cast for it and whatnot. This particular user on Twitter was sort of lambasting palate on because they had these scenes, as stock often does. That just couldn't possibly exist in real life. So, you know, like, well, it's like a $10 million corner apartment in Manhattan just covered in glass and then a platform on which your palate on bikes. It's, you know, throughout the entire day, as if you have nothing else to put in your apartment.

spk_0:   4:50
Okay, but I would argue that advertising photography, like has always right. They want to show it in a fancy apartment overlooking Central Park or whatever.

spk_1:   5:00
That's arguably the thing. I've always said that, you know, stock photography isn't really life. It's sort of Ah ah, hyper riel. Yes, world where everyone looks slightly better than in real life. Not you can't. You don't want your stock for, ah stock subjects to be too good looking.

spk_0:   5:17
No, they're not high end fashion,

spk_1:   5:19
but there definitely good looking people. They're definitely usually in good shape. Even like the grandmas and grandpas. They're pretty good looking people. Very movil, you know, even get around better that our advertising, you know, drugs and whatnot are still looking pretty good. Yeah, I don't know. Why are there they're on that Lipitor. They look pretty good. They don't need it.

spk_0:   5:42
Um, one of my favorite other than the distracted boyfriend is woman laughing alone with a salad. Do you know about this? Well, basically I don't know why, but it's like every stock photographer has done that. Shoot where it's a woman eating a salad and laughing and she's all alone. And so lots of logs have been made where your nose excuse me one block has been made that has compiled all of these, um, women eating salad alone and laughing. And it's just like it's fantastic.

spk_1:   6:14
So my criticism of this sort of absurd stock photography, you know, the late nineties when the whole concept of royalty free came about, people started selling these CDs of stock photography, and a lot of them were shot on seamless white because you could, you could mask him and drop him in and wherever. So you had the rubber duck and then you had, like, the He's very stereotypical, like the nerve. So the nerd and the beautiful woman kind of thing in your life, or the really wide angle lens of somebody like holding something up to the camera lens. There's something self perpetuating about relying on these stereotypes, so that the first guy that shoots the woman eating the salad puts that out there.

spk_0:   7:00
Genius. Whoever did that,

spk_1:   7:01
Yeah, and then every other stock photographer who was like trying to understand the trends and stock photography, says, Okay, well, that I need, I need the woman eating a salad. The other one Wow, that you see with small businesses is always like the barista, the coffee shop owner. And you're like, How many frickin coffee shop owners are there like this? It's not. That's not representative of small businesses in the United States. There's just there's just not that many. No, that's true. So there's a weird effect that I think stock photography really kind of gets into The stereotypes reinforces stereotypes, in part because we're used to having these represented. We need these obvious representations when you're selling something that has to be sort of general purpose in nature. What I mean, Well,

spk_0:   7:53
I want to bring up a point about somebody making money off of these Bank of stock photos. In 27 like mid 2017 this Twitter was launched its called Dark Stock photo, and it's just a bunch of like, absurd stock photography that just made the storyline makes no sense. It will be like people dead in a pool like it just yes, so it's It's dark and, um, like about a year later, he published a book. Bob bought all the stock photos on published a book, but you can buy on amazon dot com.

spk_1:   8:27
So he's like a curator. His dark photo Exactly. We'd be remiss not to mention the free stock photo site unspool Ash, which started as a kind of a last ditch effort to save a business because they had left over photos from a photo shoot that they put up for free. And it was really popular. None of the creator's air compensated. Some of these images have been downloaded millions, literally millions of times used in any variety of of ways. And there's definitely kind of this. I mean, I hate to use this term, but there's kind of a hipster look to the images that are very popular, you know, it's just like, ah

spk_0:   9:08
ah, hipster, Look. So okay, I want to break that down. Break it down, Because what do you mean? You mean you mean that they're not the way that you were describing stock photos? Kind of being this sort of like glossy Look, you know, some of them back in the day and the nineties were shot on like a white seamless, you know, whatever. So these new ones on unspool ash like when you say hipster look like what do you

spk_1:   9:31
Okay, so let me define the major criticism. Stock photography traditionally has been. This stuff looks cheesy. It's terrible photography. Yeah, and I definitely think that there's a segment of stock photography that has it sort of cheesy Look s o kind of in the in the mid aughts into the early tens, people started started to to strive for more authentic looking photos. But going back to this this barista analogy that we we used earlier So now you know, every photo is like a wooden table with a coffee cup with, you know, cappuccino with the leaf kind of for the big world with a small figure in the corner. Yeah, everything is. It looks like like a heavily curated instagram.

spk_0:   10:18
Yeah,

spk_1:   10:19
it's like this has a direction of a stock photography, and it's still,

spk_0:   10:23
I could say that

spk_1:   10:23
I mean, it's cheesy in a

spk_0:   10:25
different way. Yeah, absolutely. There are, I would argue there's a few stock sites that are doing it well today. Um, and that would be stock see, I think has beautiful stock photography. Um, that feels very natural. It kind of like the hipster look that you mentioned. Like it kind of deep dips into that, but it feels it's very it feels authentic. Um, the photos that I find on stock. See, um and then also I used this one at work 2020. Um, that's user generated. Photographers can submit their work to 2020. It goes through an approval process. It's curated. It's key, worded and tagged so that it's easy for photo editors to find your work. Um, and the quality of work. It ranges on 2020 but like there's some good work in there to use. Um, and then also a much newer company that I think is still building out its image bank a lot. But that has a lot of beautiful images, and that focuses on diversity is tonal, um, and that was launched by a Joshua Kissy somewhat recently, actually don't know what year, but it's fairly new.

spk_1:   11:33
Diversity. Stock photography is a huge growing business. That's something you know that a lot of photographers should look into if they're looking to sort of supplement their income I still don't think stock photography is from a business perspective. Something that you're gonna make a full time living off. Yeah, but I think you can get some regular recurring revenue if you're with the right stock company. And not just getting a penny per image. The whole, you know, Penny stock thing. Yeah. I didn't really work out well for anyone except for the platform owners,

spk_0:   12:04
right? Yes. The thought I

spk_1:   12:07
had in regards to the whole magnification of these stock photos, though, is yeah. Do you

spk_0:   12:12
feel kind of bad

spk_1:   12:13
for the photographer who took that image of the boyfriend?

spk_0:   12:17
Essentially, that's a really good question. I mean, I don't know if

spk_1:   12:21
it was stolen, but it's certainly there's more. Attribution Sze to it. There are usages of the that photographer, almost like paid for

spk_0:   12:28
under percent. Um, Buzzfeed actually had a great article in 2017 reported by Julia Reinstein, where she did kind of a deep dive into the behind the scenes story of these maimed stock photos, one of which is a photo of a young toddler, a toddler holding a gun, and he's like, crying. And this photo, like blew up on the Internet, like people were sharing it like crazy with all different types of captions with it. Um, And she contacted the photographer and was like, How do you feel about your photo being mean? And the guy had no idea that this had happened. He was completely oblivious. Ah, And he explained to her that, you know, it just was actually a natural moment of his son holding a toy gun. And he just started to cry and then started laughing. Soon after, he was done taking the photos, which

spk_1:   13:19
now arguably, that will be what this kid is known for in his lifetime. I mean, maybe he'll become an astronaut, but most likely will be like he hit his peak when he was holding the gun crying. You know, that reminds me of the most popular image on instagram, which is of the egg. Right. And the egg was just a stock photo of an egg shot on white seamless. And the photographer had no idea that it had blown up.

spk_0:   13:45
Wait, Is that Is that right? I

spk_1:   13:48
didn't know you tracked him down, and they asked him about it, and he was sort of amused. But, you know It's just a picture of an egg rice,

spk_0:   13:56
the most liked photo and the photographer doesn't even know. And like we're all striving for that.

spk_1:   14:01
See? So what does it need? Like some worthless?

spk_0:   14:03
Exactly. It means like they're worthless. Like he probably got paid to take that photo of the egg years ago. Hopefully a decent amount. And, uh, now it's the most liked photo

spk_1:   14:14
way. We have both used stock photography in the past. Yeah, it certainly fills a niche like you can't shoot everything yourself

spk_0:   14:23
100%.

spk_1:   14:24
Sometimes you're too busy. Sometimes you just don't. You're not in the right location. Stuff.

spk_0:   14:28
Yeah, and and digital media, stock photos, Air used all the time,

spk_1:   14:32
all the time,

spk_0:   14:32
all the time.

spk_1:   14:33
Um, and yet we keep hoping for something better.

spk_0:   14:39
You don't want everything. Everything

spk_1:   14:41
has been photographed, so I think it's just like we're not finding the right sources for the photography or not willing to pay for the really good photography or

spk_0:   14:48
something. Yeah, the not willing to pay is a huge thing. So, like the bad photos are worth less, they they're easier to get access to through subscriptions through Getty, stuff like that like getting knows what's being downloaded. It's gonna throw. Yeah, like my assumption is that they're gonna throw photos that air not downloaded as much into more subscriptions from publications. So those photos were worth less well and

spk_1:   15:13
arguably with, you know, the whole magnification. There's sort of a I wink kitchen ISS to using bad stock. In some cases, I do think that you do a disservice to your written content by using bad stock, but there's so many like content forms out there, they just don't care. Don't care. Totally. I read the New York Times Health Blawg, and they use a lot of Getty stock images that they've converted from color into black and white. So there's definitely kind of a look and feel to that particular blawg. Um, and and I get it. You know, I think it's a popular column, but, you know, they they want a commission, a photographer, too, to shoot that stuff for, you know, find out, find a senior citizen riding on a bike through the mountains, you know, just go get it and download.

spk_0:   16:05
No, totally. Ah, few. There are a few really good Getty stopped collections off the top of my head, including the lean in collection, which, uh, spearheaded putting photographs of women in the workplace, which was definitely a couple of years ago, way hard to find within Getty and then Also, Refinery 29 has created a stock bank within Getty, Um, of a lot of different types of body shapes. Ethnicities, um, just women doing everyday things in

spk_1:   16:36
there, eating a salad.

spk_0:   16:38
There is no there's no woman eating a salad laughing alone.

spk_1:   16:42
I hear women there. I hear, like, really good looking women love to eat. So

spk_0:   16:47
you know what? It's just the thing. It's the thing we all need to accept it. Yeah, but yes. So, like, uh, you know, those the stock industry is improving. I would say we're we're not at the renaissance of it yet. Wait for me at the renaissance of the stock, The stock world. We're not there yet, but like I think we're getting there slowly

spk_1:   17:13
keeps driving. People stop taking photos of the women eating salad, but otherwise stop. Otherwise, we're making some good, steady progress. Good, steady progress. Maybe photo shelters. The online leader for photography websites and workflow tools archive, distribute and sell your photos in a mobile friendly, responsive website. Try one free for 14 days of photo shelter dot com slash podcast, then download one of our free educational guides at photo shelter dot com slash resource is.