Stock photography isn't the enemy
There's a common line in web design circles that stock photography is always a compromise, and that every business should have full custom photography from day one. In an ideal world, sure. In the real world, a lot of small businesses are working with a modest budget and need a website live now, not in three months once a photographer's schedule opens up.
Stock photography, used well, is a perfectly reasonable tool. Used badly, it's the fastest way to make a genuine local business look like a template nobody bothered to finish setting up. The skill is knowing which situation you're in.
When stock photography is genuinely fine
Stock images work reasonably well for generic supporting content where the photo isn't claiming to show your actual business. Think decorative background images, abstract textures, generic concept shots illustrating an idea (a laptop and coffee cup for a blog post about productivity, say), or filler imagery on pages that aren't trying to prove anything specific about you.
It's also a sensible short-term option if you're launching a new website and don't yet have decent photography of your premises, products, or team. Going live with tasteful stock images, then swapping in real photography over the following months, beats delaying launch for weeks waiting on a photo shoot, or launching with photos taken in bad lighting on someone's phone.
When it actually hurts you
Stock photography becomes a problem the moment it's standing in for something that should be genuine proof of your business: your actual work, your actual premises, your actual team, your actual product. A landscaping company using a stock photo of a manicured garden that could be anywhere in the world isn't showing potential customers anything real. Neither is a cafe using a stock shot of a coffee that isn't the coffee they actually serve.
People are also getting better at spotting stock photography, even without consciously trying to. The overly diverse, overly smiley office team photo, the suspiciously perfect hard hat and hi-vis vest that's never seen a real site, the tradesperson with immaculately clean hands. None of it's dishonest exactly, but it reads as generic, and generic undermines the trust you're trying to build with a local audience who wants to know they're dealing with a real, specific business.
How to choose stock that doesn't look obviously stock
If you do need to use stock images, a few habits make a real difference to how convincing they look:
- Avoid the most popular, most obviously "stock" poses: the handshake over a desk, the exaggerated laughing-at-a-laptop shot, anyone giving a thumbs up.
- Search using specific, less common terms rather than generic ones. "Electrician wiring a switchboard close up" returns more believable results than "electrician smiling."
- Pick images with a candid, slightly imperfect feel over polished, obviously posed ones.
- Stay consistent in colour tone and style across every stock image you use, so they at least feel like they belong to one cohesive site rather than being pulled from five different shoots.
- Avoid any stock photo that includes readable signage, branding, or text from another business. It's an easy detail to miss and an obvious tell when spotted.
When custom photography earns its cost
Custom photography is worth the investment the moment a photo is doing real persuasive work: your homepage hero image, your team page, your actual finished projects or products, anything on a page where a potential customer is deciding whether to trust you specifically, not businesses like you in general.
For a trades or services business, that usually means photos of actual completed jobs, your actual vehicles and equipment, and your actual team, not stand-ins. For a retail or hospitality business, it usually means your actual products, your actual space, and your actual food or stock, shot well and lit properly. These are the images that do the most work convincing someone locally that you're real, established, and good at what you do.
It doesn't need to mean an expensive full production shoot. A half-day with a competent local photographer, focused on a tight shot list of your most important pages, covers most small businesses' needs for years.
A sensible approach for most small businesses
A practical middle ground works for most people I deal with: use real, custom photography wherever the image is meant to prove something specific about your business, and use carefully chosen, non-generic stock photography for supporting or decorative content where it isn't. Budget for a modest photography session as soon as you reasonably can, even if the website launches with some stock in place first.
Don't let "we need professional photos eventually" become a reason to delay launching altogether, and don't let "stock is free and easy" become a reason to never get around to the real photography that actually builds trust. If you want a second opinion on which of your website's images are pulling their weight and which ones are quietly working against you, I'm happy to take a look.