People Are Sharing The Most ‘WTF’ Stock Images They Find To This Online Group And Here Are 30 Of The Most Bizarre Ones (2024)

FAQs

Why are there so many weird stock photos? ›

That's because most people who purchase stock images tend to go for that look, often without even realizing it. Photographers (and stock photo agencies) are merely catering to that demand. You've made a huge first step by recognizing that these photographs look staged and “off-the-shelf”.

Yes, people in stock photos are real. However, especially with the rise of AI, some stock images use artificially generated people.

The title belongs to Rebecca Givens, a Canadian woman whose face you're probably already familiar with. You've seen it in ads, on websites and in publications across the world.

They don't always fit your brand

It's important to maintain your brand's aesthetic—it's what builds your audience's familiarity and trust with you. Instead of wasting your time trying to make images fit within your brand, find unique ones that work or create them. Solution: Always use custom imagery when you can.

Yes, there are forms of permissible commercial use of free stock photos. Carefully check the license terms before doing so. The licensing conditions available include Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licenses or licensing terms that limit commercial usage or require attribution.

Yes. Stock photos are copyrighted, meaning someone owns them. In order to use them legally, you need permission. Such permission is known as a license, a contract that authorizes you to use the image in certain ways.

Stock photography, the practice of capturing images that anyone can license for a fee, can be a lucrative side hustle or even a full-time job. For photographers, it can be a steady source of income using both previous works and new shoots in which they call the shots from the subject to the post-processing treatment.

Stock photo websites will license your photos to brands, agencies, and anyone who needs a high-quality image for commercial use. Then, they'll give you a cut of the revenue. If you're building a portfolio of professional-quality images, become a contributor to a stock photo site to monetize your collection.

How hard is it to sell stock photos? ›

Getting your work represented by a stock agency can be difficult. For beginner photographers, it's much less likely. More often than not, agencies work with esteemed photographers who have been working in the industry for a long time. They have a very large and sought after portfolio.

People who are buying photos have highly specific needs and will often opt for something that stands out from the crowd over one that is high quality, but otherwise standard. In a world that's increasingly flooded with content, people and brands are seeking unique over uniform, bizarre over banal.

Often, however, stock photos are manipulated or modified by a graphic designer in applications like Adobe Photoshop, so when you're selecting a photo, this is important to keep in mind.

Stock photography, the practice of capturing images that anyone can license for a fee, can be a lucrative side hustle or even a full-time job. For photographers, it can be a steady source of income using both previous works and new shoots in which they call the shots from the subject to the post-processing treatment.

If you didn't take them yourself, it's a big more murky. If you don't have the copyright or know who does (and it isn't public domain or a stock photo you paid for) you could be asking for trouble.

They're impersonal: By their nature, stock photos are meant to be “one-size-fits-most,” which means they weren't created to fit your brand aesthetic — and bad stock photography makes that abundantly clear. The subject is usually vague and the models may look unnatural, overly stylized or too corporate.

Stock images are defined as the archive of images that can be licensed commercially and it's a vast and vastly useful resource for a wide variety of applications ranging from advertising and social media to graphic design to websites to image-specific uses in sectors like architecture and real estate.