The Use of Stock Photos

[thefadedone]

I keep seeing blogs, facebook pages, and websites that continuously use stock photos. Can someone explain this to me? I find it extremely misleading of an artist, chef, crafter, photographer, etc. to use another person's photo instead of their own.

 

[Alice-Bee]

A stock photo is an image that someone creates for others to use freely intheir own art or just on a blog to illustrate a point/recipe/style etc.
A model may offer photos of themselves to be used freely for photomanipulations etc. without the artist needing permission to use them.

 

[Second Summer]

I see it used a lot with e.g. IT / software ads. Photoshopped, airbrushed, perfectly dressed and colour-coordinated, perfect people with perfect lighting, and obviously with a high proportion of women, all looking excited as some senior-looking person is presenting Oracle's or Microsoft's latest BS product. Anyone with any background in software / IT will know that this is utterly unrepresentative of the industry! It's annoying.