Before a company tries to save a few dollars on its corporate photography by buying cheap stock pictures or by hiring the lowest-priced commercial photographer, that business should remember this:
There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little more cheaply. The people who consider price alone are that person’s lawful prey.
It is unwise to pay too much but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.
The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It cannot be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.
– often attributed to 19th-century social critic John Ruskin, an advocate for economic reform and social change.
