Friday, April 18, 2014

Peek-tyures

Just a quick one, as it's a gloriously sunny bank holiday and I want to get to the pub. But I also want to point out this brilliant piece in the Guardian from earlier this week.

Responding to the (totally understandable) outrage at The Mirror using a stock photo for their front page article on food banks, the Guardian's head of photography writes a gentle thought provoking piece highlighting the importance of truth in photo-journalism... and it strikes me there are plenty of us in the design/web/marketing world who could stand to take this onboard too.

People are cynical. Give them a chance to poke holes in what you're saying and they will.

Stock photography can do just this. If we choose it poorly or - much worse - try and palm it off as something it isn't, we lose our audience's trust and (in doing so) lose our audience.

Right. That's quite enough pontificating from me. Pub.

1 comment:

Justin said...

The Guardian know all about the perils of using stock photography:

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2013/nov/05/sex-obese-men-stock-shot-model