Searching for Stock Photography

Generally during a design project I will look to Getty Images or iStockphoto for photography to incorporate into the web site design. Getty hands down has the best image search feature available and I often uses their tools to distill the terms of my search even if I take those terms to another stock image site. A case in point is last month I was looking for photos of oil field workers for a client that is in hydraulic fracture stimulation.

I first turned to iStockphoto because they have better pricing and if a search there turns up some quality graphics, I save the client a few bucks. After seeing limited results for "oil field worker" and "oil worker", I eventually turned the terms of "worker" and "workman" to find the type of photos I required. When I enter the original terms into Getty's engine, it immediately retrieved the term "roughneck". Of course! Roughneck! I returned to iStockPhoto with the keyword "roughneck" which revealed more suitable images than I was able to find initially.