Some may be tempted to utilize stock photography for it's ease of use and wide range of available images. It can be far more affordable than original photography, but using just one or the other can cause you some issues. Both have different advantages and disadvantages. Jesse and Catelin discuss this in this week’s episode.
This drink is quite unique and you're either going to love it or think we're crazy for even sharing it. That's ok though because we know the pickle lovers out there will have our back on this one! We think the combination of pickle juice and whiskey go quite well together and we hope you give this simple recipe a try!
Rich: Hey, Catelin.
Catelin: Hi. We're back.
Rich: We are back with another lovely episode...
Catelin: Here we are.
Rich: ... which need to get my notes out for. There it is. All right, so this is one of your favorite things.
Catelin: This is one of my favorite things.
Rich: It's [inaudible 00:00:21] that I'm not featured.
Catelin: As we've established, I have a lot of opinions, so this was just another arena for me to showcase all of the many opinions that I have. We're talking stock versus original photography today.
Rich: Yeah, which should be really interesting. You're talking with Jesse, our Chief Creative Officer?
Catelin: Yes.
Rich: So Caitlin, as I think we've talked about maybe. Yeah, we have...
Catelin: I think so.
Rich: ... once or twice. I think we got into that not say for work episode, photography you don't do. But Catelin is a photographer, shoots mostly people, families, things like that. Does a really great job with that. Really beautiful photos.
Catelin: Well, thanks.
Rich: Always very impressed. She also helps with websites, helps with guides websites, runs the show when we're building websites.
Catelin: Yes.
Rich: So has a bit of an opinion about stock versus original. Jesse does too. There's kind of a time and a place for everything.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Yeah, so we'll be talking about that today. They will be. I will not be talking. I'll be off somewhere while they recording this.
Catelin: Doing important things...
Rich: Of course.
Catelin: ... as yet to be determined.
Rich: I'm sure. One of those is I will not be drinking a whiskey pickle back, which is our cocktail for this show.
Catelin: Why not?
Rich: Oh my God, makes me just want to vomit.
Catelin: That's really not super surprising I guess. Is it the whiskey or is it the pickle or is it the combination of the two?
Rich: I'm not a huge whiskey person first of all, and then just putting pickle juice with it sounds really not like my thing. I love pickles, so I love that briny pickle.
Catelin: Yeah, yeah. That salt, vinegar. Yeah.
Rich: Potato chips, all good. But yeah, this one's always confused me. Did Jesse like these?
Catelin: Mm-hmm.
Rich: He does?
Catelin: Yeah, I think yeah, I think so.
Rich: Okay.
Catelin: One of the reasons we opted for this as a cocktail is because one of his favorite local beers is the Pickle Juice, Pickle Juice from Jackson Street Brewing, which also has a picture of my friend Rick on it. Rick is a big beer drinker and-
Rich: Rick on the beer can bottle?
Catelin: I'm pretty sure it's the Pickle Juice Sour that Rick's, because he is like Pickle Rick. I think it's from Rick and Morty, right? We're really in the rabbit hole here but Rick's face is on a can of beer from Jackson Street Brewing. I'm pretty sure it's this one.
Rich: Okay, and we're thinking it's this one.
Catelin: Either way, rick is one of my nearest and dearest friends and he deserves his face on a can of beer.
Rich: Of course.
Catelin: Whether it's this one or any other.
Rich: I think everybody does. Everybody deserves their face on a can of something, a bottle is something. I'm back to putting my bottle on a face of wine so my friends will know I'm missing, that kind of thing. Forget the milk jug, that's not going to help. We got kind of a twofer. We've got the Pickle Juice, Pickle Juice sour from Jackson Street Brewing and you've got a whiskey back. Do you want to explain to people what a whiskey pickle back is?
Catelin: Yeah. Yes. A whiskey pickle back is really just a shot of whiskey and then you chase it with pickle juice and it's decent. I am with you that I'm not a super big whiskey drinker, so that part is not appealing to me but I do love a pickle. I also don't love sour beer.
Rich: Yeah, okay, so the pickle back, it's like...
Catelin: It's legitimately pickle juice. Yeah.
Rich: Okay, so I do my shot of whiskey and then a smaller shot of pickle juice and then do I suck on the lime or does the lime go in something?
Catelin: Oh, I've never. I don't do them with lime.
Rich: Okay, well the official recipe...
Catelin: The office recipe has lime?
Rich: ... has lime juice.
Catelin: Maybe then. See here's the other thing is this recipe calls for three ounces of whiskey and that's a lot, because a shot is an ounce and a half, so you're really doing a double.
Rich: Yeah. I wonder if this...
Catelin: Is meant to be shaken? Yeah, I wouldn't do that.
Rich: I mean, gee.
Catelin: Will somebody let us know? Will you tweet at us or send us a comment? Help us understand how we're supposed to drink whiskey pickle bags.
Rich: I know when producer Zach posts these, we post the recipe and usually it has more than just the ingredients. That will probably say whether you throw all this together and shake it or you do this double shot of whiskey, which makes you not worry so much.
Catelin: You're less concerned about the pickle. Yeah.
Rich: Wow. I think this is the first time a cocktail has remotely confused us.
Catelin: We usually know what we're doing.
Rich: Yeah, and we're not drinking this one right now just FYI if you couldn't tell by my earlier comments. That is not happening.
Catelin: Rich refused. He dictated to us that we would not be drinking this, which is fine. Again, I don't drink a lot of whiskey, so that's okay with me.
Rich: Yeah. We'll save these for Jesse. As you guys are getting back to the topic, yeah. As you're talking stock versus original photography, did it come down to one is superior than the other?
Catelin: No.
Rich: Or was it more conditional on a whole lot of things?
Catelin: Definitely conditional.
Rich: Okay.
Catelin: Yeah, I think you kind of mentioned this, there's a time and a place for both. There are some hard and fast rules, but really it's kind of comes down to budget and use case more than anything.
Rich: I think your source of stock, I'm guessing you guys probably talk a little bit about that, where you get your stock matters. Actually, I know you do because I was either in the room or I was near when you recorded this. I don't recall now.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: It's not going to be a things Jesse hates, stock photography, don't do stock photography. It's going to be like, here's a time and a place for it and some reasons you might and some good tips to make it better if you are going to use it. But if you can shoot original, shoot original, sometimes that makes a lot of sense as well.
Catelin: Yeah, we touch a little bit too on the licensing of stock. That's one thing that I really caution people to be aware of is making sure that you won't find yourself with a cease and desist or lofty attorney's fees because you were using something you weren't supposed to that you found on Google.
Rich: Or somebody does a DMCA take down on it and suddenly your site has no images because they were broken because those links were broken from the person you stole it from.
Catelin: Yeah.
Rich: Or you get a nice note from the government that you're in violation of a federal law.
Catelin: Yeah, because it's like, don't do that. People deserve to be paid for their work and fairly compensated for the work that they're doing.
Rich: But I thought that if I found it on Google, it was okay.
Catelin: I don't think we have time for that right now.
Rich: Catelin's going to kill me. It is not okay to just use something you find on Google, which they probably cover as well. But yeah, so why don't we...
Catelin: Let's jump in.
Rich: Yeah, let's get into it. So Catelin and Jesse talking about stock versus original photography. Enjoy.
Catelin: Welcome back to Cocktails, Tangents and Answers. I'm here with Jesse, our beloved chief creative officer at Antidotes 71. How are you?
Jesse Good. Thanks for having me back.
Catelin: Yes. This is my dream episode. I'm so ready. I'm pumped. We're here today because you're going to educate us and I'm going to help, the differences and benefits of stock versus original photography. I'm very excited.
Jesse Yeah, that's a good.
Catelin: It is. To start, can you tell me and us, the audience, major differences between stock and original photography?
Jesse I think the main difference is obviously stock is just pre-made and they put it out there for all the world to see. Anybody can purchase it and use it as they see fit. An original, you're paying a professional photographer.
Catelin: Hopefully. Hopefully you're paying a professional.
Jesse That also makes a big difference.
Catelin: We'll get to that.
Jesse Yes. It's really custom. Most of it is either your space or your actual people, specific things to your company and culture that you can really pinpoint with original photography that you can't really get out of stock.
Catelin: Yes. Do you find between the two, one being more valuable or important than the other?
Jesse Obviously anytime that you can use original, I think it's probably better, but not everybody can do that all the time. There's definitely benefits of both. There're good sides to both. There're downsides to both as well. I think it just depends on your situation and what you can afford, what you can kind of manage at the moment. Is it a quick turnaround thing? Do you have time for a whole photo shoot?
Catelin: Yeah. That takes me, to ideally, when are you using stock photography? What types of situations does that apply?
Jesse Mostly smaller budget. If you need to purchase a few images just to get it out there, some quick turnaround stuff is pretty good for stock because you can literally click three buttons and you've got a photo downloaded. Some of the plans can get a little expensive if you're buying one offs and they're like hundreds of dollars or something. That's not a good option, but also it's just good filler. If you have closeups or stuff that doesn't need to be custom, stock can work just fine as a good second option for that.
Catelin: Yeah, I think this is a good opportunity to cover to the importance of appropriate licensure and using...
Jesse Very important.
Catelin: ... images that you've either purchased or that are part of your image library or copyright released, that you have the right to use and share those images. I know small companies and even larger entities can run into problems when a photographer finds that their image is being used inappropriately. You can either get cease and desist letters or that can go as far as monetary damages depending on the use case, so just encouraging people to be cognizant of the worst case scenario if you're not using appropriately license.
Jesse And the bigger company, the more trouble you can get in because you have the capital and budget at that point to either purchase it correctly and get your correct license or get original photography. That's pretty inexcusable when bigger companies...
Catelin: I know, I know.
Jesse ... are getting attacked for that.
Catelin: I think so much of it too is just a lack of education around that. I come at it as the photographer. I want to be compensated for the work that I'm doing and so I think when you break it down in that way, people start to understand where they're like, oh no, this is a product that you have made and I can't just have it for free because it's on the internet.
Jesse Yeah. I really struggled with that early in my career, especially in school too. It was like, oh, all this stuff. For student work, it's a little bit different because you're not...
Catelin: Because you have six cents and thousands of dollars of student loan debt, which is a little bit different.
Jesse Well, I'm not actually doing anything with your work.
Catelin: You're not selling it.
Jesse Right, it's just for learning purposes at that point but even when I got into the workforce and I was searching for stock photography and would run into one that I wanted to use for a project, but it was only for editorial use and you had to be super conscious of that because it's like, oh, well that's not going to work so find something else. Yeah, definitely. That was a good
Catelin: If there's one takeaway I want you all to have, it's that please license your images properly. That I think takes us to a situation for original photography. When you're creating your own, you kind of have carte blanche license to use those however you'd like, depending on the agreement that you have with your photographer, obviously.
Jesse Yeah, but most of them are really flexible and super good on that side of it. When you need that extra touch and you can get really personal with what you're shooting, you can kind of pick and choose your shots, and it really starts to show your personality and the culture of either your people or your business as a whole or really whatever. Maybe your product.
Catelin: Yes. I think that's a great call out too, is trying to use stock product photography can be really misrepresented of your brand and then you run into problems where this is not what I ordered.
Jesse Yeah, that's terrible. I think we've all probably been part of that where we're looking at something online and...
Catelin: I got catfished.
Jesse ... it's really nice and when you get it, you're like, that's not the same thing.
Catelin: Scale is important as well. now as it relates to our business, I'm really excited to get some new imagery in our new space just to showcase a little bit more of our personality. That's going to be fun. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. When we talk about stock photography, I always think of the worst case scenario and...
Jesse Those are the funnest ones.
Catelin: Where you're like, oh, that's an interesting choice. This is not a worst case scenario, but there's one, we used a filler iStock image on a client website mock up. That woman shows up on suggested ads for me now from a completely different.
Jesse I know her!
Catelin: I was like, oh, she's an attorney. What is she doing in this HR platform? But I'm like, that's not...
Jesse Yeah, that actually happens. The more that you look at stock photography, you start to pick up on the models. We see this one guy for the senior living or retirement stuff, and he's everywhere.
Catelin: He's just a handsome old dude.
Jesse Just living in his best life. He's on a boat. He is chilling with his grandkids. They're different all the time.
Catelin: How many grandkids do you have, Bob? It seems like a lot of children.
Jesse Very interesting family. His life is fascinating. But every time I see him it's like, oh, it's Bob.
Catelin: He's back. I think we do a stock photography after dark episode where we just write life stories.
Jesse Just scrolling through iStock.
Catelin: Yes.
Jesse Well, we have a channel for that and click.
Catelin: We do.
Jesse We throw all the really terrible examples in there.
Catelin: What was the creative direction given to this? There was some post apocalyptic, war paint, automatic weapon.
Jesse It looked like Mad Max.
Catelin: We're like, who is using this on their...
Jesse Must have been a fun photo shoot.
Catelin: Right? Yeah, I bet they had a blast making it. But is there a worst case or when you think of an inappropriate or bummer use of stock photography, what comes to mind?
Jesse The first one is just kind of a goofy one that I always think of because...
Catelin: I can't wait.
Jesse ... it just sticks in my mind. It's the episode of Friends where Joey is doing the modeling and he's in a photo shoot and is just completely oblivious to everything Joey is. Then he sees himself on a poster for VD.
Catelin: He's really excited for a second where he's like, Hey, that's me.
Jesse Oh, it's me.
Catelin: And then he's like, I don't, that's not me. None of this is true about me.
Jesse I think it actually happens when he is walking with a girlfriend.
Catelin: Yes. It's been a long time since I seen it.
Jesse Or a date or something too so it's super embarrassing. But that ties into real world examples where with stock, you don't know who else is using those photos. It could be something if you've got the old man Bob example. If you're using him for your cool retirement financial something or the other, and he is in ads for other businesses for something completely different. If people stumble upon that just like we do, that could hurt your brand potentially.
Catelin: Or even just at the baseline be confusing for people where they're like, wait, what am I looking at?
Jesse Is that the retirement community?
Catelin: Yeah. How often are you using reverse image search when you're like, can you find this somewhere else and tell me whether or not it's a bad idea?
Jesse I think we've actually done that a few times. Got some pretty interesting results. It's like, okay, we're going to stay away from that image.
Catelin: Maybe we'll just eliminate that shoot from our choices. Do you have any takeaways, like a final thought?
Jesse I mean, like I said...
Catelin: I'm going to put you on the spot one. Yeah, if we're going to remember one thing about this.
Jesse Yeah, it's that neither one of them is inherently good or bad. They're both pretty neutral options and it's just how you use them. Stock can be great. It can be super efficient and helpful. It can fill in when you don't have...
Catelin: In a pinch.
Jesse ... options and when you're in a pinch. Original is always great too, but it comes at its own downsides. Both are really good options. We use both of them. You just have to be careful with how you're using it.
Catelin: Yeah, yeah. As always, it was a pleasure.
Jesse Yeah. Thanks for having me back.
Catelin: Thank you.
Jesse Apparently I didn't swear enough in this one.
Catelin: I don't think we had any. There were no swears.
Jesse I didn't this time, either.
Catelin: You can take that E off of our description. My mother will be so proud.
Jesse Maybe we'll get it back up at some point.
Rich: That's it for another episode of Cocktails, Tangents and Answers.
Catelin: We hope it was as much fun to listen to as it was to make.
Rich: You can find me on Twitter or Instagram @RichMackey. I try not to make it too difficult. It's just my name, and you can find our agency @Antidote_71. That's A-N-T-I-D-O-T-E underscore 71 on Twitter and Instagram as well.
Catelin: And you can find me at home sipping a craft cocktail prepared by my in-home bartender. It's my husband.
Rich: We'll be back with another episode every other week and a whole new cocktail recipe, plenty more tangents, and of course, answers to those pressing marketing questions.
Catelin: And if you'd like to send us a question, you can go to CTApodcast.live to send us an email.
Rich: Or you can call our hotline at 402-718-9971 and leave us a voicemail. Your questions might be used for future episodes of the podcast.
Catelin: For now, like and subscribe and tune in next time.