Website Footage

by Karel Thönissen

When we first developed the website for Garabit, we intended to use a stock photo from a well-known source. However, the costs are prohibitive: hundreds of euros for a single photo on a single (home) page without the right to crop, scale or alter the photo. The photo we had in mind was a beautiful black and white photo from around 1900 of the viaduct after which our company is named. We developed the template for our web page using this photo as a place holder. But the costs were too high. As a matter of fact, for that amount of money one could go to France, have a long photo shoot and spend a good holiday there as well. Err, for the price of 2 photos, that is.

In the end we solved this problem by taking one of my own photos and editing it. As a color photo it was a dog, but after conversion to black and white, it met all the requirements we had set for ourselves. Man hours are not free, I know, but now we had something that would be completely free of rights.

It always amazes me how many websites are populated with stock photos of happy smiley people. Photos that could sell software, washing powder, tooth paste, olive oil or shampoo (do not mix these up, your hair will look horrible). For all the money they have spent, they obtained nothing more than an impersonal nothing-saying page filler. These days with a simple digital camera one can do better than that. Just go out on the street and shoot a year worth of footage. I did so during my last holiday to the Cantal, when I visited the Garabit Viaduct.