I need to do a nice little glossy advert for some consulting that I do. I want to add a nice picture of a computer on a desktop. My pictures just aren’t professional enough to suit me. I believe that there must be a company that does nothing but take pictures for others to re-use (at a price.) Does anyone know of a place that sells stock pictures for re-use?
Do a Google search, clicking on Images at the top first, for keywords related to the things you want in the picture (e.g., computer, desk, in this case; I’m making the response broader than your specific need). There are several services who produce imagery and ensure their HTML meta tags include the appropriate keywords; run the search and weed out extraneous hits, and you’ll arrive at one of them quite quickly. They’re equipped to sell any size image you need online rapidly. One I recall goes by the name of Photostock, and generally comes up any time I do an image search; there are several others.
Another one is called The Stock Market:
http://www.stockmarketphoto.com/
Getty images is a very popular one.
We often use Getty Images and Corbis in our ads and mock-ups. They have pretty good search engines, too.
Try iStockPhoto. It’s very inexpensive and the quality is excellent.
If you do a Google search for “stock photos,” you’ll find a bunch of places. Some of them will do custom work. You can also talk to a photographer near where you live and have him/her shoot something custom for you. Then you own all rights to the picture and you can support a local business.
Be careful how you answer questions! I licensed some photography for an ad a while back, and they asked where I’d be running it. I said it was a “national magazine,” and they gave me a quote that I thought was very high. When I explained it was a trade association publication with a circulation of only 20,000, they dropped the rate dramatically.
Thanks guys. There are some great sites there.