In Defence of Stock Photos

Stock photography - that is a library of royalty-free photos - seems to be the subject of much mockery lately. Buzzfeed has numerous, hilarious pages involving the glorification of the cheesiness of stock photos.

For tomorrow's release of the film Unfinished Business, the studio has released stock photos of the typical business sort with the cast of Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, and Dave Franco.

AdWeek has an article on the campaign and the full set of photos. It turns out the photos are actually digitally altered to include the cast into pre-existing stock photos. But they look convincingly cheesy.

You can get the stock photos on Getty Images - along with the equally hilarious captions.

 But stock photos aren't necessarily as bad as these satires make out. If you have a website or other types of publications to get out on a budget or very quickly, stock photography can be a lifesaver. It's not like many people can afford to hire a photographer and arrange a custom photo shoot every time they need an image.

Stock photo providers contain an amazingly extensive library of stock photos - generally categorized and with keyword tags so nowadays its easy to find any photo you want at an affordable price - even if your tastes tend to the cheesy!