This week’s “winner” of falling victim to cheap, online stock photography is the United States Postal Service (USPS). In early December 2010, the USPS began to issue three billion new postage stamps bearing a close-up photo of the face and crown of the Statue of Liberty. The photo was bought from an online stock agency.
One small problem, though. It wasn’t the Statue of Liberty in the photo. But rather, it was a picture of a fiberglass and styrofoam replica statue.
In March of this year, after the stamp had time to get into circulation, stamp collectors noticed that Lady Liberty wasn’t quite herself. Collectors realized that the photo was really of the replica Statue of Liberty in front of a Las Vegas casino.
The casino is happy. It’s now the first casino to be featured on a US postage stamp.
The US Postal Service isn’t quite as happy.
When a business buys from a cheap, volume-orientated online photo agency, it pays its money and it takes its chances. There’s no guarantee of source, content or usage history.
However, when a business buys either stock photos or assigned photos directly from a professional photographer, it gets exactly what it ordered. The business will know where the photo came from, where/when/how the photo was made, whether the photo has been used in the past and if the photo has been altered or retouched.
Yes, all these guarantees cost a bit more, but what’s the cost of a “do-over”?
