For the independently employed, stock images are a rip-off.
Do you find yourself spending too much time looking for a decent stock image to use in a design? I did today, and its a slow & arduous process. Even worse is the fact that most of them cost upwards of 40 dollars to use!
I understand that being a creative professional takes years of training and cultivation. One of the goals of mastering a craft is to be able to charge money for that. However, I ask myself today: how many stock images require a master to create? Most just require an SLR. Maybe someday I’ll reach a level of expertise where my skills warrant charging a ton of money for what I can produce in a few seconds.
From my current vantage point as a beginner, I wish that people would be a tad more humble. With competitive free resources out there, at least make it cheaper! And I say that as a profit-seeking photographer.
So before you buy a stock image to complement your design work, blog, etc, check out this useful post by Mashable. I’ll recommend this free stock image site where I found the image I used in this post. http://www.sxc.hu/index.phtml