Businesses that don't use their own photos

[Dueanamechange2025]

I follow quite a few dance schools on facebook / insta from the days of my DD & DSD dancing (and have attended a couple). There is one dance school that very often uses pictures from online in there posts / ads. They don't state 'not our dancer', so unless you know / follow the school you are likely to presume it was one of their pupils.

On thinking about it, it could apply to any business really, pizza shop using an online pizza image, valeter using a brand new car etc.

If you knew a business did this, would it put you off using them? and should they have to state 'not our image'.

YABU - it doesn't matter its just a photo / ad
YANBU - of course it matters, its misleading and makes you think that is what you are buying

I'd rather they used a stock photo instead of posting a random pupil online for advertising.

Almost every business will use stock photos as good photography requires a lot of skill and experience, and it's unlikely they have someone on staff able to do it.

I use stock photos on my website (yoga & Pilates classes) I’m not sure the people in my classes really want to be on the website when they’re in down dog! Also as pp said the lighting etc - much better to use stock photos. I’m pretty sure no one thinks they are actually people in my classes - it’s pretty easy to tell the difference due to the lighting / clothing / fact the models look impossibly model like compared to the average yoga goer in the village hall.

Yanbu. Our sports centre does this.
In real life it looks far more crap than the photos suggest.

I have a website and I use a mixture of photos - some I have taken, some are of the thing I'm taking about (like a house, a famous person) but not taken by me but from a site like Wikimedia or Pexels, others are generic stock photos which are sort of on a theme but not specific.

It depends on the business - a dance school posts a pic of a real child and you either get a parent kicking off about safeguarding, or asking for a fee.

Even if the dancer they use if technically far superior than any dancer I have ever seen dancing from that school?

It is one of the challenges of operating a small business in this social media age. Owners need to be able to run their classes with everything that it entails as well as producing marketing materials that look slick on platforms that are constantly changing. Within a short time, software changes, styles change, the way you can use text / images / video etc changes and all of these need to be learned and executed, in the knowledge that it is not clear how much this will impact your business if you do these things or not. You can't use images without consent, the cost of getting a professional in to take, edit and share professional images is prohibitive, as well as time consuming and even with stock images, you probably have to pay as it is increasingly time consuming to find and use free ones.

So no - I would not judge..

Rather depends on what the business is I suppose. A dance school or yoga teacher or something might well use stock photos of generic dancers and such or illustrations as it’s unlikely that their customers would want to have their photos used for advertising (and all manner of data protection/ consent issues). That said, my daughter having just started dance classes (at a lovely place) it would have been nice to have been able to see some photos of the studio itself and perhaps some information on the teachers.

Totally different when it is stock photos used for a restaurant though or a hotel or similar when one of the things you often want to research before going is what the venue and food looks like. And there are places that don’t put up their own! When they do that I always think it’s a bit like if an estate agent started putting up photos of generic houses (or nicer houses) rather than the one they’re trying to sell.

But if they got professional photos done of a dancer who wasn’t actually anything to do with the school they’d be putting across something that wasn’t representative of their classes and would have to spend an awful lot of money on it.

I suppose it depends what your point is really. Are you against businesses using stock photos because they mis-represent the business? If so hiring a professional dancer for a photoshoot is hardly helpful.
If your point is that these sorts of stock photos are usually easy to spot and make a business look slightly cheap and stuck together with the website equivalent to a bit of sticky tape, then I’m sure most of the businesses that use them would agree with you, but sadly do not have it in their budget or list of priorities to do anything else. It’s tough out there and a lot of dance schools and such barely struggle along from month to month and (justifiably or not) cannot afford a marketing budget.

We use stock photos for "scenes" on our website because if we put pictures up featuring staff members, and those staff members left, the pictures would need redoing.

No it wouldnt put me off- you have to get signed permission for people to agree to have their photos up so what they are they supposed to do if people say no?

If they had zero photos then people would criticise that too

My child's dance teacher invited a load of them for a free class in exchange for being photographed for advertising. She chose children who she said turned up on time, smiled and wore their uniform. I did wonder if she also chose photogenic the most children though!

Most of the other schools in the area use their own photos of their dancers in there post updates, just seemed odd that this one doesn't. Reading lots of the comments I can see some of the reasons why, especially on the actual website that won't need updating as much. My overall reason I guess was it feels like they are showing themselves to be better then they are.

Ah. Well I suppose then that it depends what sort of photos this place is using to advertise. If it’s a rather generic photo of a ballet dancer (adult) then it would probably be seen as only representative of their classes ‘product’ they are selling and would probably be rather obvious that they are just using the photographic equivalent to clip art. BUT if it’s photos of people/ children at a completely different dance school then that’s different and is rather misleading/ false advertising. That then is like putting up photos of some gorgeous boutique hotel and lauded restaurant and when you turn up it’s some dive that serves rather greasy reheated burgers!

Websites, insta etc is advertising. Nobody thinks those cheerful people dancing up and down the pristine aisles in Asda wearing the perfectly fitted fleeces actually work there. And I can’t think of many businesses (or people for that matter) that don’t portray themselves as ‘better than they are’. It’s all aspirational.

Yeah they do share lots of photos of their kids in costume at comps etc so no problem with permission, and they shared a photo of a child in a certain position saying new jazz solo pending, but then today put a photo up saying some spaces left in our jazz class with a single girl dancer on the image in the same position as the previous post but far far superior technique. It just made me think after scanning seeing the post on my newsfeed, my first thought was ohh wonder which dancer that is she looks great, only to look closer at their feed and see that they often use stock images for these advertising posts but the ones of their own dancers don't look anywhere near as 'good'. I just felt someone not familiar with dance / the school would assume that to be their dancer.

I’m looking for yoga and Pilates classes at the moment.
However as a retired person I would be put off your class by these photos as I would assume it’s not intended for people like me.

That is true, but in asda I am buying the product not the staff member. In dance / yoga / sports, you are buying the coaching and seeing their results would be good.

I think it does matter, especially when the image gives the impression that it’s their actual work or product. If a dance school shows a dancer, people will assume it’s their student. Same with food or car services — we expect to see real examples of what they offer. It feels a bit dishonest otherwise. At the very least, they should say ‘image for illustration only’ or ‘not our dancer’. Honesty builds trust!

I think these are my feelings too.

I don’t know how they get away with it. There’s a restaurant near us that definitely uses someone else’s photo of a Sunday roast!

I run a business that uses both stock and own images.

The permissions and regulations around using people in advertising is quite difficult to manage so I fully understand using stock photos where people are concerned. Photography for marketing is very expensive so if it is a small local business, it's far cheaper to use a stock photo than one taken by a hired professional.

Very few of the actors or models used in marketing actually work for those businesses or use that service so the reality is even if we did hire professional photographers, it's quite likely a model would be used anyway.

That they use a stock image wouldn't put me off if I was able to see the premises and equipment prior to taking a class or paying a membership fee.

Over the years, I have stumbled across quite a lot of dance school websites, and in general, the ones that use stock photos of dancers for promotions are doing so because they need to. If they used pictures of their own dancers, anyone with any genuine dance knowledge would avoid the school like the plague.

This is what it made me think.