View image | gettyimages.com
The age of heavily retouched models is over. With the proliferation of social media and camera phones in virtually every pocket, we’ve become far more used to seeing a wide variety of aesthetics and options pop up on the visual landscape. Human beings come in all shapes and sizes after all, and the aberrations of real life are being more readily embraced. Real people with real bodies are more popular than ever, as are images that have a bit of blur, sun flares, glitches, or other “mistakes.”
At Getty Images, we’ve seen this trend play out with a change in the type of imagery we’ve been selling over the past seven years. Our most popular 2007 baby versus 2015 baby shows the latter is clearly more candid and largely out of focus. It’s not the perfect moment, but it is a real moment.
Using imagery like this in your projects adds a spirit of authenticity, trustworthiness, and heart to your message. And it celebrates how life really is in all of its messy splendour.