Stock photography is a creative paradox. Its purpose is to blend in while featuring people—effectively turning humans into “human-shaped” ideas. Ultimately, most stock photography fails to represent diverse people and their real stories of how they behave in the real world. While creating for Best Buy, we saw that this issue is exacerbated when it comes to diverse people engaging with technology.

The commercial photography industry is stacked against creators because it requires them to take on all the financial risk until their work finds a buyer. The barrier to entry has resulted in libraries of content that over-index on whiteness and heteronormativity and fall back on portraying marginalized identities as stereotypes.

Our objective was to remove the financial barrier to entry for diverse photographers to bring real people and real moments into stock photography, encouraging artistic depth and authenticity without the risk.

To diversify Best Buy’s library of images in a way that feels authentic and avoids the stereotypes and flatness commonly found in stock, we worked with creators from diverse backgrounds to tell true-to-life stories about their own communities, giving them wide control of the project, on both sides of the camera.

Production crews were hand selected by each creator, and the talent featured were primarily composed of friends and family of the photographers.

Photographers were paid their full commercial fee by Best Buy but retained the rights to resell their photos wherever and to whomever they want without financial restraint. The created images greatly benefited from the creators’ perspectives on their own communities, being more true-to-life than traditional stock. Plus, the profits generated from the images stay within the communities they reflect.

Best Buy aspires to be the most human voice in technology. It is essential for Best Buy to portray diverse communities authentically in its advertising—especially because its core target audience is comprised of people from all backgrounds. But many underrepresented communities—Black, Latinx and LQBTQ especially—are portrayed stereotypically in technology stock photography:

-Showcasing one “token” non-white individual in a large group

-Overly representing Black technology users as “hip” teenagers

-Portraying Latinx individuals as blue-collar workers

-Using LQBTQ stereotypes including rainbows, parties or parades

Our brief was to change the stock photography world for these communities. It was essential that our approach included diverse creators that could authentically create images of technology enabling and amplifying universal truths of love, joy, family and belonging. By changing the stock photography norms, Best Buy was proving that it is the most human voice in the technology industry.

We sourced three creators through an art buyer from the agency. Hundreds of books and photography feeds were reviewed to narrow to a dozen possible contenders. To ensure the vision for the project was in alignment between the agency and the photographers, live interviews were held as working sessions to ensure a strong partnership. Our recommended creators were then presented to the client and finalized based on vision for shot lists, talent selections and budget.

We provided our creator partners with a brief that contained a singular request—show how your community authentically interacts with technology. The creators then took the reins to develop the project. Production crews were hand selected by each creator, and the talent featured were primarily composed of friends/family of the photographers.

The shoots resulted in 20+ final images from the three different creators that accurately represented Black, Latinx and LGBTQIA+ communities interacting with technology.

We created a library of 20+ photos that show how BIPOC and queer folks actually use everyday technology, because they were created by the communities they portray. So far, images have been used by Best Buy throughout 3+ campaigns and communications, with more planned throughout the year.

We also set up our client—one of America’s largest consumer electronics retailer—to lead the way in changing the commercial photography ecosystem. Because Best Buy doesn’t own the intellectual property, it’s available for other brands to use, making the potential impact of the images infinite.

So far, we’ve generated interest from Microsoft, Dell and Samsung, and are actively working to get additional tech brands to utilize the imagery.