Are You Guilty of Using These Stock Photo Cliches?

We get it – good stock photos can be hard to find.

And when you need an image, fast, it’s easy to default to the obvious.

In online publishing, feature photos are sometimes the last thing to be added to an article, and it’s just more straightforward to search for the main keyword in the article for your search term.

But, that can lead to some less-than-stellar photo choices. And we’re here to help you put an end to it.

Here’s a few of the most played-out and overused stock photos to watch out for. As editor for the Envato Blog, I am guilty of using nearly all of these photo cliches. Here’s an article about creativity, one about teams, and one about virtual reality – all with fairly cliche feature photos.

With the launch of photos on Envato Elements, we’re focusing on authenticity and quality in stock photos. Here’s a few red flags to avoid in stock photo cliches (and because we want to make the internet a better place, we’ve also added some ideas for what to search for instead!)

You can do better than a bunch of nighttime cityscapes.

Can you name the cities by the cityscapes above? Probably not, because most cityscapes end up looking the same.

Skip the city lights, and find some authenticity in your travel photos: images that look like something you’d take if you’d actually taken a trip there (and you were a skilled photographer).

Get rid of: the people high-fiving in an open-plan office.

Photos of high fives are weird. The point of high fives is that they’re in motion the whole time. This means that a photo of high fives just looks like people are raising their hands at each other, or comparing hand sizes, or doing some strange ritual.

Instead, look for people working together. Maybe in a conversation. Like normal.

Please don’t use: an up-close photo of a microphone.

As someone who writes about podcasts a lot, this one is a particularly frustrating stock photo trope. Luckily, I’m not the only one who’s noticed. The excellent Julia Barton wrote an article in Current railing against the use of ‘mic pics’, which she says are ‘missing the point’.

Instead, go for photos of people listening. Or headphones, at the very least.

Don’t choose: that photo of a guy with a laptop on a beach.

This is unrealistic. You will probably get sand in your keyboard if you do this. Don’t perpetuate this fantasy with a stock photo. Also, how can these people see their screen in the direct sunlight? And what if their computers run out of battery?

An alternate suggestion: someone working in a fun place that’s slightly more in the realm of possibility. Think ‘trendy coworking space’ or a ‘shady park bench’, not the edge of a mountain.

Skip: the vague coding image.

Not only does this not say anything about what you do, but half the time, the code in these pictures isn’t even relevant to the actual work.

Instead, go for a nice mock-up of a web design in action, or maybe a fun illustration of a web developer.

Don’t pick: watercolors, paint brushes, or crayons.

This is another one that I’m guilty of in day-to-day work. We have a lot of articles about creativity on the Envato Blog. It’s easy to hit ‘creative’ into the image search box, grab a pretty photo of some paint-filled brushes or watercolor scribbles, and call it a day. Hey, it doesn’t look bad! But unless you’re literally a watercolor painter, it can feel a little arbitrary. And also, boring.

Instead, look for a photo that’s more descriptive of what you really do. Or, flex your creativity skills and add an interesting Photoshop action to take a standard image to the next level.

Skip: the guy in an empty room with a VR headset.

Sure, this is an accurate representation of virtual reality. But, it looks silly. If you’re trying to write about VR in order to move it forward and/or make it more popular, these images aren’t helping.

Choose instead: when you think of VR, you think of the imagery inside of the headset, not the empty room outside of it. Pick something that represents what the users are seeing. If you can’t do that, at least find a VR photo that seems more realistic than an empty room.

If you’re writing about – don’t use:

Discover more beautiful, authentic stock photography on Envato Elements.