Anyone else sickened by corporate stock PR photos?

Ermz

Ermz

¯\(°_o)/¯
Apr 5, 2002
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Melbourne, Australia
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I just bought a copy of Quickbooks, and the entire packaging from the box, down to the manuals, catalogues and CD case itself are loaded with these horrid, artificial stock shots of random women smiling at the camera in generic office scenarios.

Am I the only one who immediately feels that the company are disingenuous scumholes as soon as I see products/sites littered with this?
 
I'm sickened by anything corporate, and the stock images only remind me of people who commissioned those, and the sad photographer that had to execute those

I hate the ad industry


Oh, and..

business-meeting-1.jpg


*Look, we're really busy and look all professional in our fancy suits while defrauding your money, tehe'
 
the photographers that shoot these photos make ridiculous bank. look at this fucking studio

 
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Actually, this is the exact thing I would love to make a living from...being a (amateur) photographer. And I love paying attention to stock photography. ;)
 
The photographers are fine. They're just in it for a paycheck. It's like the guys who produce tween pop, crabcore, crunk, gangsta rap etc.... they must know on some level they're contributing to making the world a worse place, but they still have to eat.

It's the people (or committees, rather) who issue the photos I've got a problem with!
 
They do it because it works for most people.

Once you've been able to break the illusion for yourself, it feels silly and questionable. But there's always "most people" who subliminally start thinking more positively about a company if there's a broad plastered with a fake smile on their website or one of their ads.

I've noticed the same thing about some tv shows that include normal people, who are then more or less made to do stuff like laugh, cry, get angry, etc. basically reacting to things the show is about. Then the result gets magnified with effects such as background music, different styles of shooting, editing and so on. They're trying to make it FEEL as real as possible to make the show worth watching.

The sheer fakeness of it all practically made me stop watching television a few years back because when the illusion doesn't work for you, it's just fucking annoying to watch. This is probably something like what you feel when seeing one of these stock photos. You're not the only one who gets sickened by it, definitely not - but you are in the minority.
 
xFkx said:
I'm sickened by anything corporate, and the stock images only remind me of people who commissioned those, and the sad photographer that had to execute those

I hate the ad industry


Oh, and..

business-meeting-1.jpg


*Look, we're really busy and look all professional in our fancy suits while defrauding your money, tehe'
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well, you know that pic wasn't from an american company, or I'd at least be shocked if it was because it would require the black friend and the asian counterpart in the pic as well
 
Skinny Viking said:
well, you know that pic wasn't from an american company, or I'd at least be shocked if it was because it would require the black friend and the asian counterpart in the pic as well
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If it was Australian IT, and racially accurate, it would be two indians and an asian, with one white guy standing off in the distance, and an aboriginal in some really hard to see spot that makes you shit bricks when you finally see him (passed out drunk on a train).
 
If it was Scottish and racially accurate it would have two pale white guys and one ginger with all three scratching their balls.
 
RemoWilliams said:
So how are stock photos ruining the world again? I'm confused.
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This. I don't understand the beef with stock photos and how they're ruining the world. Sorry. And you don't understand...I would like to do stock photography not just for the check...but because I LIKE it. It's a field of photography that I really like and enjoy. But, this has nothing to do with not understanding your viewpoint. I just plain don't understand. This isn't a shot at you at all. I'm just curious what your reasoning is.
 
Nah thats wrong man, gingers are a separate ethnic minority, there's pale white guys and then there's gingers...
 
When I was a little kid I did not want to be fireman or an astronaut. I actually wanted to be an advertising executive in charge of making ads in magazines.
 
The good thing about stock photos is that they don´t have any brand on it. Sometimes it is really difficult to take a pic for a client where no other brand appears (clothes, billboards, shop signs, etc). What pisses me off is how stock image banks flood the results of Google Images search with watermarked pictures.
 
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