Stock Photos That Are Obviously Not Canadian

The van with the wrong plates

A contractor's home page shows a smiling crew beside a white van in a sunny driveway. Look closer and the van carries an American licence plate, and the house behind it flies a flag from its porch.

Most visitors never consciously notice. Some do, and once they have, every claim on the page about being local and family-run reads a little differently.

Stock libraries are filled mostly from the United States and Europe, so the default photograph of a house, a van, a kitchen or an office usually comes from somewhere else.

The details that give it away

• Licence plates from American states, readable at full size.
• Flags on porches, poles, hard hats and uniform sleeves.
• Wall sockets from Britain or Europe in kitchens and offices.
• Road signs in miles per hour, and fuel priced by the gallon.
• Vans and trucks with the steering wheel on the right.
• Palm trees, desert gardens and stucco houses with tile roofs.
• Banknotes in American dollars on a page about prices.

The third is the one that catches most sites. Canadian and American sockets look alike, so the giveaway is a British or European one, which anyone who has stood in a Canadian kitchen spots at once.

Why visitors notice

Someone looking for a local service is checking two things: whether you do the work, and whether you are really nearby. Photographs answer the second question before any text is read.

A picture that does not match the street outside makes local feel like a claim rather than a fact.

Popular images also travel. The same smiling cleaner can appear on cleaning sites in several cities, and a customer comparing three companies sometimes meets the same face on two of them.

Houses and streets that look like here

Where stock is the only option, search with terms that describe your area: rain, cedar, mountains, prairie, townhouses, snow. The results will still be mixed, but closer.

Then compare the houses with your own street. Sprawling brick colonials and adobe walls look nothing like the split-levels, townhouses and vinyl siding most Canadian customers live with.

Clothing matters too. People in shorts under a blazing sky look odd on a page about work done in February.

Checking a stock photo before using it

Open every candidate at full size and look at the edges, not just the subject. Plates, sockets, signs and flags hide in the corners.

Then run the image through Google's search by image, which shows where else it appears. If a competitor down the road already uses it, choose another.

Keep a record of the licence for each photograph: where it came from and what it allows. Royalty-free does not mean free of terms.

Your own photographs say local

Nothing looks more like here than here. Your own crew, your own vehicles, your own premises and real finished work cannot be mistaken for somewhere else.

For a business that sends people into homes, this matters more than usual. Customers want to see who will be standing at their door.

The photographs need not be elaborate. A morning in good light, with a decent camera and a list of shots, is usually enough to replace the stock on the main pages.

What to photograph first

Start with the pictures that answer a visitor's real questions: who will come, what they arrive in, and what the finished work looks like.

Then the places a customer might visit or recognise: the front of the premises, the sign, the counter. Skip anything a camera makes dim or cluttered, such as a crowded back office.

Five or six good images, used large, replace most of the stock on a typical small business site.

A worked example

A house cleaning company with four two-person crews had a site built around stock photographs: a woman in yellow gloves in a vast kitchen, a team of models in matching aprons, and a van in a sunny American driveway.

Then a customer asked on the phone whether the women in the photographs would be the ones coming to her house. They were models.

Looking closer, the owner found a British socket above the kitchen counter, and the same models, in the same aprons, on a cleaning site in another province.

A photographer spent a morning with the crews: each pair beside its car with the logo on the door, a crew at work in a client's kitchen with written permission, and the owner at the office desk.

The team page now shows each crew with first names. The people in the photographs are the people who ring the doorbell.

Permission and privacy

Photographs taken in customers' homes need written permission and a careful eye on the frame: house numbers, mail on the counter, family photographs, children's names on the fridge.

Staff need to agree to appear on the site too, and know what happens to their photograph if they leave. Replacing a departed crew member's photo promptly keeps the page honest.

When to take them

February is quiet for many service businesses, which makes it a good month for a photography morning. Crews have time, and nobody is rushing to the next job.

Winter light is short, so plan for late morning. Interiors photograph well in any season, and outdoor work can be added in spring.

The counter-case

Some subjects carry no sign of place: hands, tools, textures, a cup of coffee on a counter. Stock is fine for those, once checked at full size.

And some businesses cannot photograph their work at all, because it happens in private spaces or behind walls. For them, carefully checked stock is a sensible stand-in.

But for anything showing houses, vehicles, staff or premises, check every detail, and use your own photographs wherever the subject is your business.

Replacing the stock

1. Open every photo on the site at full size.
2. Look for plates, flags, sockets and signs.
3. Search the main images with Google's search by image.
4. List the shots only your business could take.
5. Get written permission from staff and customers.
6. Book a morning to take them in good light.
7. Replace the home page image first.

Step four is the one that changes the site rather than tidying it. A list of photographs only you could take is a list of things no competitor's site can show.

Photographs that date a site are the seasonal side of the same problem, covered in the home page still selling Christmas.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.