Comments on: 3 reasons to use less stock photos in your presentations

By: PowerPoint images: Are you making these mistakes? | Speaking about Presenting: Presentation Tips from Olivia Mitchell

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:24:09 +0000

[...] RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! OliviaThere’s a disturbing trend – the use of irrelevant images in PowerPoint [...]

By: Anke Troeder

Anke Troeder — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:51:14 +0000

Thank you Carolyn for bringing up the CC topic. The trend towards more images (which is perfectly all right in itself) is leading to "borrowing" of images on an incredibly large scale. There should always be one last slide in a PPT-deck with credits, I believe. Quite firmly. flickr.storm is another neat way of searching flickr for CC-images. Click advanced to see the various options. And you can always: Take images of signs and graffiti. Scribble. Doodle. Even those of my students who think they have nor artistic talent at all, come up with amazing results, using basic tools like Paint, or more advanced ones like Inkscape, or they simply draw the emotions/faces/situations they need on paper and scan it it. Nor problems with copyrights, no problems with people’s rights. Picture book perfect. And it makes the slick digital setup so much more human again.

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:52:18 +0000

Thanks for the reminder, Carolyn. It’s an important point. Olivia

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:48:43 +0000

I guess it goes without saying (but after reading photographers’ blogs, perhaps not!) that whenever you do a Flickr search, make sure that the owner allows you to use the photo under a Creative Commons license. I noticed that’s not the default setting on compfight. You’d need to click on “Commercial” or “Only” before searching.

I use Flickr photos all the time in presentations, and using the advanced search feature (http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/) gives easy access to Creative Commons options. It also helps me snag the photo URL so I can give appropriate credit. This is really important if you wind up publishing the slideset publicly on something like Slideshare or Google Docs.

By: John Windsor

John Windsor — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:23:47 +0000

I totally agree about avoiding those pasty, over-used, lifeless images (though they are a step up from the horrid clip art). I still find iStockphoto valuable, but it’s rare that I find a single image that works for me. Instead, I construct images from a collection of images, and/or I create a story by adding text to an image (or even elements of a dialog).

Regards,
John

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:30:06 +0000

I will add another. Think about the image that will help make your point and then go out and capture that image using your camera. Think of it as a photo assignment where you are the customer, editor and photographer. This has the added benefit of making you really think about the image that you need.

Plus, it gives you an excuse to upgrade that camera!

By: Olivia Mitchell

Olivia Mitchell — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:20:57 +0000

Nicely put Jan. And that’s a useful list. Thanks, Olivia

By: Jan Schultink

Jan Schultink — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:44:32 +0000

I agree Olivia. The smiling business man is the reincarnation of the clipart from the 1990s.

Stock photography can still be helpful for:
- Images of children (often very spontaneous)
- Images of isolated, bland things (oops, need a vacuum cleaner)
- Images of weird characters for non-serious presentations
- Images of textures/patterns/silhouettes
- Images of real places (Bvd. St. Germain in Paris)
- Images of “Zen” landscapes and nature

By: Nat

Nat — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:49:05 +0000

I agree Flickr is a much better resource for authentic and original images. We have a custom search built into SlideRocket that works similarly to compfight so that once you find an image you can just double click it and it’s on your slide. It saves all kinds of time and streamlines the workflow.

By: Denise Graveline

Denise Graveline — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:11:33 +0000

Great post, Olivia–I use stock photos, too, but find that an easy way for any presenter to get great candid shots of people is to remember to take photos when you are doing a presentation. I routinely shoot crowd scenes or small groups of my audiences, and sometimes of other speakers, to augment stock photos.