I’ve learned, from my time as a grad student and TA, and subsequently as a freelancer, that honest critiques of work are an important part of the process. My straightforward critique on stock photos of creatives? Most are wrong. That is not to say there aren’t authentic headshots of artists in their studios and artistically-captured, in-process images of photographers, artists, and designers gracing websites and social media. They exist…but they make up a very small percentage of the images within the platforms where you can sell and purchase stock photography.
As photographers, artists, designers, and creatives, you understand the reality of the work. You also have an opportunity to turn your expertise into a side-hustle by creating better, in-demand images—and fill a huge market gap. Here are six of the most common clichés, cringe-worthy items, and ideas for realistic, authentic stock photos of creative professionals.
1. Digital Creatives Doing Post-Production: Tiny Fake Plants
The Cliché: A filmmaker, photographer, musician sitting at a sparse desk with a Mac laptop, minimalist keyboard, and invariably, a desk decorated with one or two tiny, fake succulents or little shrubs in small pots. It’s giving IKEA catalogue. Generally, in these images, every tool of the trade is also laid out on the desk–three camera bodies and every lens, is my favourite for photographers.
A plague of tiny fake plants taking me right out.
The Visual Impact:
This kind of imagery comes across as inauthentic & generic. It communicates that the company or person using or commissioning the image doesn’t actually know this demographic, which can be alienating if that’s their intended target.
Why It Doesn’t Work: the fake plants make no sense and yet they are everywhere! (Good thing there’s the Photoshop Remove Tool to make these images even passable). Once the shoot is done, most photographers are going to put their gear away either to prep for the next or just to avoid any incidents–my cat would knock a lens to the floor just to make a point.
What stays out: cards and card readers, portable hard drives. Maybe keep one camera in the frame for visual cue, but pulling every single piece of equipment makes post-production look like taking inventory.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill: Focus on the action and tools of the craft. Show a professional working with relevant software and hardware interfaces, Adobe Suite, Capture One, using Wacom tablets, colour-calibrated monitors, using ergonomic equipment or at least set ups that make sense.
For filmmakers and musicians, show editing control boards, large-scale monitors with editing software such as Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve for video and Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) for music, and hardware like microphones and headphones. Show honest clutter–in a world of fake stock, for editorial images, I want to see toast crumbs and coffee cups. Real WFH/Studio Shots; and for commercial stock, sleek images of setups without the unrelated shrubbery.
2. Photographers at Work: Mixing Wet & Dry
The Cliché: Digital Photographers’ Desk with new DSLRs/Mirrorless cameras sitting next to obsolete, film-developing canisters, reels and other wet-analogue process accoutrement.
The Visual Impact:
This kind of image prioritizes props over realism. It implies the photographer mixes wet lab work (film development) with digital post-production on the same desk at the same time. I don’t know about you all, but the wet stuff stays near a sink, and chemistry does not come near high-touch surfaces.
Why It Doesn’t Work: It’s factually wrong. It alienates any working photographer who knows wet film and digital processes are separate. In practical terms: do you want contact dermatitis? Because that’s how you get contact dermatitis.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill:
Document the digital process and niche workflow. Focus on the actual tools of the digital trade: cameras (when in use), specialized monitors, external storage, colour calibration cards, or images showing lighting setups and tethering in a real studio.
If you’re creating stock about analogue processes: the darkroom process, sinks, canisters, reels, film, drying clips, trays, enlarger, timers–then maybe dried film strips at the production desk, ready for a film scanner or scan-to-camera setup.
3. Writers Writing: The Perfect Desk, The Untouched Notebook
The Cliché: The Immaculate Desk/Laptop Shot, accessorized with a single untouched notebook, a pen and a cup of coffee–usually with equally untouched latte art.
The Visual Impact:
Whether you’re a writer, content creator or artist doing admin, an image like this communicates that the creative process is tidy, simple, and never involves physical or digital chaos–you know, work. It’s both unrealistic and not interesting enough to be aspirational.
Why It Doesn’t Work: Real creative work is messy–even writing, and not even just mentally. It can involve multiple devices, programs, tabs, and scribbled notes. There’s also the empty coffee cups, maybe a needy cat, and a general lack of aesthetic perfection. This sterile look instantly identifies the image as a staged lie designed for a lifestyle blog. Things have taken a turn when the keyboard cat gif is a more accurate representation of what it is to be a writer…
Far more realistic. Tells a story, and ergonomics are on point.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill:
Lived-in spaces, even if they are still just a little unrealistically cool, will still come across better than the inauthentic sterility of this kind of perfection. I’d rather see a page of text on a screen and a Grammarly widget than a pristine notebook with one word written, go forth and ask writers to be real, or realistically fake.
4. Painters in their Studio: Clean Clothes, Dirty Faces
The Cliché: There are so many clichés to stock photos of artists in their studios, but especially painters. There’s the artist covered in paint patterns that look brushed on, a woman with a paintbrush holding up her hair; the painter wearing spotless, fashionable clothing while holding a brush with zero paint on it in front of a canvas that doesn’t even look gessoed.
The Visual Impact:
Performative creativity and vanity. This cliché communicates that the painter cares more about looking good than making good art. It suggests that creative work is a backdrop for a lifestyle photoshoot, but more than anything, to an audience of painters, it screams fake.
Why It Doesn’t Work: The process of painting is inherently messy and unpredictable. The perfect paint patterns and clean clothing are visually ridiculous to anyone who has actually worked with oils, acrylics, or pigments. When a clean, dry brush is moving down a canvas… a painter sheds a tear.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill:
Focus on the process. Show the genuine mess and focus—close-ups on hands at work, the detail of layered texture, the exhaustion on the face after a long session, or the real protective gear (like aprons, masks, gloves). Capture images showing painters using proper, realistic studio attire and techniques. The world of stock imagery is missing authentic, candid shots of painters immersed in the physical labour of painting.
An example of dynamic stock of a painter painting
5. Sculptors: You Can Make Bowls and Only Bowls
The Cliché: Sculptors are only ever shown working with pottery—specifically making simple bowls or mugs on a pristine wheel, often with pretty tidy hands.
Visual Impact:
Reductive. This cliché suggests that the entire medium of sculpture is limited to simple ceramics, ignoring metalworking, carving, large-scale installation, casting, or 3D printing.
Why It Doesn’t Work: It limits the visual vocabulary of “sculptor” to the most accessible, marketable form (small ceramics). It fails to represent the true physical scale, material diversity, or heavy machinery involved in professional sculptural practice.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill:
Start with material diversity. Feature artists working with unconventional or industrial materials like steel, wood carving, stone, resin, or additive manufacturing. Focus on the tools (welding equipment, chisels, power tools) rather than the resulting mug.
Stock image platforms are sorely missing artists working with industrial and large-scale work. Shots of artists working in large, specialized studios; photos featuring processes like welding, casting, digital fabrication, or handling materials that are clearly not clay.
6. Designers: Over the Rainbow
The Cliché: Designers are consistently pictured holding or staring intently at a colour wheel, usually paired with a desktop full of floating swatches.
The Visual Impact:
This is pretty elementary and obvious. This kind of image of a designer at work suggests that the height of the practice of design is memorizing the basics of colour theory. It treats a complex, strategic profession like a grade-school art class.
Why It Doesn’t Work: Professional designers use digital tools for colour management, and colour stories, not physical wheels. The image is visually generic and fails to convey the strategic, UX/UI, or typographic complexity of modern design.
Alternatives & Gaps to Fill: Show complex wireframing, code, brand guidelines, mood boards, or UX flowcharts. Show a designer working with programs like Figma, Zeplin, or Illustrator Focus on the strategic planning and problem-solving aspects of design. Images showing designers presenting ideas, sketching complex flows, collaborating with clients, or working on non-visual elements like research and data architecture.
A compelling image of a designer working realistically.
Advice for Aspiring Stock Photographers and Art Students: Your Studio Is a Stock Photo Goldmine
Are you currently an art student or an emerging professional with access to a studio, realistic props, and possess technical skill? If so, you are sitting on a goldmine. All the clichés we just covered demonstrate that these creative professions are universally misrepresented in stock photography. If you apply yourself and focus on authenticity, you can fill this market gap and earn income from your own real-life creative workflow and environment.
The Ethical Note: Be sure to secure the proper model releases and property permissions for your work, and consider cutting your artist colleagues into the profits if your documentation of their process becomes profitable—or simply document their work in exchange for your access. This is how you create authentic, high-value stock photography that genuinely sells.
How to Get Started Photographing Stock Images (If You’re Not Already a Photographer)
You have a creative practice, an eye for interesting composition, and you already document your own work—or at least you’ve been meaning to start. With additional photography knowledge at your fingertips and time spent practicing techniques, creating stock photography could become a nice little side hustle providing additional income.
Here are our top tips and guides for creatives starting out in freelance stock photography:
- The Ultimate Used Camera Buyer’s Guide
- 12 Types of Lighting in Photography
- Guide to Your DSLR Settings
- 7 Essential Photo Editing Basics: Our Top Picks of Adobe Lightroom Tutorials
- Stacking Creative Skills for Professional Success
- How to Sell Stock Photos
How to Capture Authentic Stock Images:
Trade: contact artists who need bio images and shots of themselves working–even installation images, and trade for the use of additional shots you want to take.
Understand the medium/art practice. Talk to artists, watch interviews and studio tours. Get a sense for the reality before trying to approximate one.
Bring your own props. Don’t rely on your model if they’re not in the profession you’re trying to capture, watch the videos, learn about the medium and bring the props.
Make Your Stock & Client Work Easy to Share
Present galleries, deliver files, and license your images from one portfolio.
Try Format—for professional photographers, artists, and designers.
Contributor
-
Julia Martin is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Montreal. With an MFA in Visual Arts and a BFA in Photography, her work has been exhibited across Canada, China, France, and Finland, including multiple artist residencies. She has taught at the University of Ottawa, served on art juries, and has fifteen years of experience as a freelance photographer. Julia's own artistic practice could best be described as "sad stories punctuated by jokes."
Though sometimes it's the other way around.
