Of course the stock models were far nicer than the real people I encountered

How could you tell?

Quote from: fiftyfootelvis on May 07, 2013, 19:49

It sounds cliche, but I need those images all the time, and most of what is available is awful.

try Alamy RM, a recent sale i made was about an asian granny grilling chicken legs on the street and smiling at me with a few missing teeth, more than 100$ net for me, RM licence, you won't find such "obscure" and 100% realistic subjects on micros

just looked at her and mouth is closed! now Marco tell me why twitter and facebook are for losers but forums are a lot of fun

Quote from: fiftyfootelvis on May 07, 2013, 19:49

I buy a lot of lifestyle stock and I rarely use models isolated on white. What I am always looking for are natural looking people, not posing, not looking at the camera. I want to see an instant of real life captured. I want great lighting, and artistic flair. As the boomers age, there is definitely a growing market for good looking, active older people. Shopping, golfing, eating, drinking, biking... It sounds cliche, but I need those images all the time, and most of what is available is awful.

I thought of this thread today as I was searching SS/Canstock for some realistic photos of a business meeting and all I could find in the first 5 pages were with a white background and people looking fake and smiling at the camera. So I wanted to chime in PLEASE no more isolated on white photos!! I'm sure people use them but the market is over saturated with them. I agree with fiftyfootelvis - I'm always looking for  candid photos of people in realistic situations and backgrounds for my graphic projects. I do a lot of non-profit work and that's the worst because it's hard to find 'real' looking diverse people to fit the not-happy-shiny-smiling content I'm designing for.

I've had the same frustration as a designer. My clients don't sell people. They sell products or services, and that's really what the pictures need to convey. Isolated shots emphasize the people, but completely ignore the working environment.

For white-collar professions, I'd rather have a generic office with blurry file cabinets, copying machines, and the like in the background, as opposed to white. These shots are harder to come by in microstock, probably because they require access to an office environment for the shoot rather than just a white backdrop. That's understandable, but still a bit frustrating.

The other problem is that if I want to maintain design continuity across the site, I want some consistency between the pictures used on the various pages (and even more so, pictures used on the same page). This means that I need more than one picture, most of the time; and I want the pictures to have similar "feels" to them. Microstock reviewers, however, often reject pictures simply because they are "too similar" to other pictures in a batch, not thinking that for reasons of maintaining design continuity, many designers would jump for joy if they could find want multiple, similar pictures of the same models in the same environment.

That's the main reason why I've often wound up using pictures with white backgrounds even though I really didn't want to. There simply weren't enough good shots with more realistic business backgrounds for me to maintain design continuity, so I resigned myself to using isolated on white. It wasn't my preference, but it was the best I could do considering what was available image-wise.

-Richard