Stock photos are getting lame. They’re too perfect, too old school, too corny. There are no filters on the typical stock photo, and the background is a plain white. Everyone’s either smiling with perfect dents or artificially expressing an emotion like sadness or anger with a fake, simulated frown. These guys used to rule PowerPoint presentations and formal lectures, as well as blogs of old, but nowadays, images of landscapes and architecture and hipster people are king, especially when rendered in such a way that they look vintage.

The discovery of Unsplash changed my life. Being a typographer by hobby, I took this as quite the heaven-sent present, because I no longer have to look for pictures on Google (or worse, take them and edit them myself) when I need an eye-catching background image for my typography. All I have to do is log onto the site, click on an image I find apt, and save it to my desktop. The only real hassle here is my sluggish internet speed.

These gorgeous images may have spiffed up my art, but they’ve definitely brought mediocrity into my work ethic. In fact, they may be destroying it little by little. Work ethic is defined by Wikipedia (heh) as “a value based on hard work and diligence” and by the Google dictionary as “the principle that hard work is intrinsically virtuous or worthy of reward”. But where’s the hard work in scrolling through a few photos and picking out what looks good? Sure it’s legal and free, but it’s lazy. There’s no more looking for the prettiest subject, pacing around and hunting for the best angle, or fiddling for the best settings to take the photo with, or even merely choosing the right amount of vignette or the best filter. The hard work and diligence is gone, and so is the excitement of actually taking a photo. The photo loses the story behind it, and is reduced from a snapshot of a beautiful moment to just another stock photo.

And so my art is moreover stripped of originality. Especially around Medium, Unsplash pictures are used in abundance. It’s unsurprising to see a blog post (or two or three) with the same cover image I used for one of my posts or pieces. Sure, they’re excellent photos. Some are breathtaking, and some present an interesting view of a subject or an aspect of life. But to know that these photos have now become easily replicable changes their worth and virtue. They’re now indeterminate goods, commodities that have lost their uniqueness. No longer are these beautiful images beholded as one-of-a-kind paintings but as undistinguished, run-of-the-mill placeholders whose value has been watered down. Stock photos. I’m using stock photos in my art.

Yes, it’s my choice to avail of the service, and I’m not blaming the talented photographers behind Unsplash for anything. I’m just saying that I’ve been too dependent on stock images, and this in turn has curtailed my work ethic and originality, and possibly that of everyone else like me in this regard.