licensed photo © Yuri Arcurs: BigStockPhoto.com
OK, how many times have you seen this picture, or a picture containing some or all of these people, or a similar group on a website? How many times are they purported to be the people you’ll actually be dealing with at the company? Man, it’s so easy when you’re building a website, or having somebody build it for you, to just grab something from the internet or a stock photo company and paste it into your ABOUT page. The downside is the people who see your website have probably seen this picture, or one of thousands like it on a number of websites. I guess you can assume either a) Wow! the company these guys work for must be HUGE, or b) YASP (yet another stock photo) team of “employees” trying to make me trust the people who run/built this website.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE stock photography and I license* hundreds of images for my projects and websites. They are great for allowing your visitors to visualize a product or service your business provides. They are wonderful for the covers of books and a million other representations. I find them perfect for the characters and places in my online storyworlds.
Just don’t try to pass them off as YOU. Or if you do, at least add a disclaimer like — “This is what we would look like if we were a multimillion dollar company and there were really more than just one of us.”
Cave res falsum,
HM
*The right to use copyrighted material granted by the creator or creator’s agent, normally for a fee or other compensation
HoarseMan of... 