Stock photography in use

I took this fairly mundane looking photo as an illustration of how stock images can end up being used. This is the side of the local hardware store, exhibiting some fairly bland stock photos. They're so bland I doubt they even register with most passers by but you know what? Bland they may be, but they've obviously sold at least once! Stock photos often aren't up to much creatively, but if they illustrate a point for an end user that is what matters.

This is the sort of competent illustrative imagery that microstock sites can be a good outlet for. They are never going to set the world on fire but are useful and can over time with regular downloads make a quite decent return. For shots like this I personally now favour microstock marketing where I can rely on getting a reasonable RPI (return per image). Placed with traditional agencies images like this are now a gamble on the unlikely event of a sizeable licence fee.

Images that might set the world on fire? Well, despite istockphoto's Vetta I still don't want to go the micro route with what I consider my more valuable work.