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Restaurants using stock images

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michael.powell

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Restaurants using stock images

by michael.powell » Wed Jan 03, 2018 11:58 am

Have you noticed local eateries using generic stock images to promote their menu? Are you a restaurant owner/manager who has used stock images? I'm curious about this trend I've been noticing lately. The recently closed Finn's, for example, used a photo from Bon Apetit to promote their hot chicken...
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Robin Garr

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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by Robin Garr » Wed Jan 03, 2018 3:17 pm

To be honest, that's probably not a thing I would be likely to notice. Given the margins in this business, I'd rather see local restaurants grabbing images off Teh Google than paying someone with a camera to take photos for them. Same principle as paying for "restaurant PR." Am I missing something here?
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by Steve P » Wed Jan 03, 2018 4:43 pm

In much the way iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, etc have wiped out the music industry - The stock photography industry (Shutterstock, Getty Images, etc...) has pretty much wiped out the professional-earning-a-living photographer. Why pay a professional to come in for a shoot - when you can spend a couple of hundred bucks and in return receive access to (literally) billions of photos - thousands of which are going to contain the -exact- subject matter you're looking for. As (what I'll call) an advanced amateur photographer, I hear and read complaints (and praise) of stock photography every day...It's literally caused thousands of experienced and talented photographers to pull down their shingles.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by RonnieD » Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:15 pm

I just use my phone to take pics of our food. One of my cooks has an awesome camera, so when we need "professional" shots we use that. If anything is killing the professional shutterbug industry it would be phone tech.

I guess if you are making average food, using an average picture you find on the internet is just fine. I would rather customers see my actual food and know what they are getting. We work hard to make really spectacular stuff, so I don't think a stock photo would do it justice.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by bob.durbin » Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:30 pm

RonnieD wrote:I just use my phone to take pics of our food. One of my cooks has an awesome camera, so when we need "professional" shots we use that. If anything is killing the professional shutterbug industry it would be phone tech.

I guess if you are making average food, using an average picture you find on the internet is just fine. I would rather customers see my actual food and know what they are getting. We work hard to make really spectacular stuff, so I don't think a stock photo would do it justice.



This is the real answer. With the advent of professional grade cameras being introduced to cell phones, it's almost obsolete to have anyone take your food's photos. Professional photographers have lost a lot of business due to this.

One of my former Gms had a pretty talked about post on social media regarding this topic about a year ago. He was a communications major with a focus on digital photography. He was very adamant that if a business took a photo from the internet, maybe they were taking the entire recipe. He would never let us use an already existent photo. Which, we never would bc we made everything in house and he took dope photos.

This blew up on our Facebook with another very popular local business owner who used a stock photo for a dish he wanted to push for his new concept. That concept is something else now that's been much more successful than I think the other would have been.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by Mark R. » Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:52 pm

From a customer point of view I would much rather see a poor picture taken of the actual dish than a gorgeous picture that doesn't represent the food I'm going to be getting! Matter of fact I would rather see no picture than a picture of food for someplace that's not even close by and in many cases one that looks nothing like what I'm going to be getting.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by michael.powell » Thu Jan 04, 2018 1:15 pm

Agree with Ronnie and Mark 100%.

My iPhone has a greater megapixel value than my Nikon DSLR. We've reached a technological point where anyone can capture a really good looking photo. Of course, if you have the budget or want, a professional photographer levels up a restaurant's image. But not everyone needs that.

A recent example I'm thinking of is that Finn's (RIP) used a photo from Bon Appetit to advertise their hot chicken sandwich. It's since been deleted. However, a cursory search on Yelp saw a few photos from customers that could be totally usable for promotion. Why would you not want to promote your own food? Not to mention, using photos from, say, Google Image without proper licensing ain't exactly legal. I've seen others do this too.

It really befuddles me to use not-your-food to advertise your food.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by matt.stone » Thu Jan 04, 2018 6:20 pm

Robin Garr wrote:To be honest, that's probably not a thing I would be likely to notice. Given the margins in this business, I'd rather see local restaurants grabbing images off Teh Google than paying someone with a camera to take photos for them. Same principle as paying for "restaurant PR." Am I missing something here?


Please don't advocate 'grabbing images' off Google as a way to get cheap content. If the photo has a copyright -- and photos are technically copyrighted the moment you take it -- then you could get sued for copyright infringement by the photographer. Yeah, I know, the stock photography business has been hit by the royalty-free stock agencies. I may be a dreamer, but there's still room in this world for professionals. It's smaller for sure.

The iPhone can take great photos; I'll admit at times I've used it at times as a defunct 35mm, mirror less camera. But paying somebody to photograph your dish for your website or menu is not the same as paying for 'restaurant PR.' It's paying for someone's skill. If you don't want to do that, that's cool. Just don't rip images off the web. When people would say they couldn't pay me for my photo but 'would credit the image to me' I'd respond I can't pay my bills that way. 'Hey Duke Energy, I can't pay you for your power but I'll tell everybody how awesome it is!'
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by Robin Garr » Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:27 pm

matt.stone wrote:The iPhone can take great photos; I'll admit at times I've used it at times as a defunct 35mm, mirror less camera. But paying somebody to photograph your dish for your website or menu is not the same as paying for 'restaurant PR.' It's paying for someone's skill. If you don't want to do that, that's cool. Just don't rip images off the web. When people would say they couldn't pay me for my photo but 'would credit the image to me' I'd respond I can't pay my bills that way. 'Hey Duke Energy, I can't pay you for your power but I'll tell everybody how awesome it is!'

Thanks, Matt. That makes sense.
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Re: Restaurants using stock images

by Richard S. » Sun Jan 07, 2018 1:49 pm

Robin Garr wrote:To be honest, that's probably not a thing I would be likely to notice. Given the margins in this business, I'd rather see local restaurants grabbing images off Teh Google than paying someone with a camera to take photos for them. Same principle as paying for "restaurant PR." Am I missing something here?


Pulling images from Google is risky if you're not filtering search results by ones that are free to use commercially.I had a client of mine supply photography for a publication I wrote for them, and later received a bill for $1600 from Getty Images. Turns out the client just pulled copyrighted images from Google. I passed the bill on to them; I'm not what the outcome was.

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