Here is a scenario: You are working on a message to promote a new restaurant. The restaurant has multiple cuisines, and you put up an excellent banner with a beautiful, relevant image. Suddenly, the restaurant starts receiving customers and the footfall increases. Have you ever thought what attracted these customers? It’s the image that went with the message.
These images were either specially created for the campaign, or the marketer bought stock images from a vast library of images that are already available. When it comes to the work of every designer, stock photography plays a critical role. However, just having these stock images won’t suffice the need. The designer should know how to use them effectively.
Today, stock photography is easily accessible. However, this was not the case in recent years. Earlier, whenever anyone needed a stock image, they had to call the stock house and share the description of the image that they want. After sharing the requirements, there was an extended waiting period where the stock house representative would bring a whole set of slides with pictures inside them. During this time, the demand for images was far more than the supply, and the entire industry was moderated and controlled through a tiered network. This model worked for quite a long time until the advent of the internet. Also, the technology around stock photography has been evolving. After slides with images came the concept of images on CDs to help speed up the process of image selection.
Today, there are many online portals available which house a vast collection of stock images. Those in need can search the portal, and within few clicks, you get a complete collection of images matching the requirement. However, the critical factor for any designer and photographer to take into consideration is to be open for “serendipity.” They should be flexible to put together a bunch of images and make alterations such as removal of a watermark to create the perfect model for their project.
Stock photography and images are a vital component in today’s marketing tactics. The quality of these images has also improved over a period because the need of the hour states that these images form a critical element of any marketing mailer, advertisement, content creation, and many more.
Want to know more about stock photography? Click on the link below to watch a quick video and to download the whitepaper The Evolution of Stock Photography.
