>> "The entire stock photo industry is so bad at creativity you can basically instantly tell if a photo is a stock photo, making anyone using them look like a complete fool."
Only the bad, outdated stock photos. There is still a whole market for the "obviously corporate corporate website" corporate website, but that's falling out of fashion.
What you're thinking of are the bland, white backgrounded photos and photos shot in stale, generic office settings so they could be worked into any design. That's not really how it's done anymore. Modern stuff doesn't look posed and staged, and often isn't.
In stock photography, if there are people in it, they can only make money on that image if there are signed model releases. If you have signed model releases, it is staged and posed.
Sure, someone could take a candid image and then after the fact attempt to gain releases. However, that's not workflow with a high margin of success. At that point, the "model" has all of the power. Also, crowd shots in public streets blah blah.
W8 Y? At least in the US I'm generally free to photograph and video anyone I'd like, own the rights to said media, and and do whatever I'd like with it outside of a few explicitly carved out scenarios like fraud or using images of somebody whose career is also their image. Are stock photos one of those carveouts?
Only the bad, outdated stock photos. There is still a whole market for the "obviously corporate corporate website" corporate website, but that's falling out of fashion.
What you're thinking of are the bland, white backgrounded photos and photos shot in stale, generic office settings so they could be worked into any design. That's not really how it's done anymore. Modern stuff doesn't look posed and staged, and often isn't.