More Diversity Needed for Stock Photos

[Nathan5E07]

I am a black designer & student. While searching for images of African-American people for my projects, I noticed that there are VERY few. For instance, I have a project coming do pertaining to sexual disfunction caused by pornography. I searched "sexy black female" and the results returned white females in black lingerie or with black hair. I then decided to search for "black models" in several different categories and received similar results. I ended up having to purchase the images I needed from another provider, which cost me a lot more money. I am sure Adobe can let contributors know that there is a need for more diversity.

[Abambo]

Please start contributing. If you see a missing link, contribute that one...

[Nathan5E07]

Im sorry if this is too direct, but that's not the answer. I contribute by paying. If I wanted to take my own photos, I would not need Adobe Stock. I am not a photographer. I do projects for school and personal use and I pay $30 to search for usable content. If this community is run by Adobe as a service, it should be a service to everyone. If you do not understand this concept, then you are not the one who should be responding.

Now, that being said, thanks to others in the community who atually offered real solutions, I did change my search term to African American and it did return more black images. It had a pretty good selection, but there is still room for improvement. If you search white, Indian, or Asin woman, you get what you search for. The same should be true for black women.

Thank you to everyone who have chosen to help correct this issue.

[Abambo]

I contribute by paying.

Yes, but the database is filled by contributors who are independant photographers. Everybody can contribute. So you can too. You don't need to, however. But the stock industry is not driven by Adobe hiring photographers swarming out to take pictures. It's driven by contributors uploading their pictures here.

Adobe recommends doing this or that, Adobe can refuse pictures, if they do not meet quality standards or are to abundant represented in the database. But Adobe does not pay contributors to contribute. Contributors are paid because their pictures get acquired by people like you.

However, if you take my example, I could not contribute Asians or Africans because my environment is not that diverse.

Have a nice day!

[moonlynn]

I'd like to chime in about this topic. (What timing for me as I was just about to make my own post about diversity.)

I understand from all the replies that the Stock Advocates Fund has been developed to encourage a new volume of diverse assets. This is awesome. However, like @Nathan5E07 mentioned about their situation, I am also not a professional (or even amateur) photographer who can contribute, nor do I have the equipment or time. I also understand from the replies that the photographers are independent and not Adobe employees.

With that said, what would be the best method for getting into the right hands a request for more diverse images like the ones shown below?

Examples from my own search terms: If I search for "business hands abstract," I can find several images like the examples below, all male. If I search for "African American business hands abstract," I could only find one similar image within three pages. If I search for "female business hands abstract," I find more images than the ones for "African Americans" but still far fewer than ones depicting men in business suits. I did not find any black/brown-skinned female images. (Side note: The search term "black" should be added to include "African American" images. Not all black people are Americans, and not all are Americans from Africa.)

Not that this matters, but I am a caucasian female abd this issue is personally important to me, as well. In addition, I work at a very forward-thinking, modern, and pro-diversity company and it would be a great benefit to have a broader range of these types of images.

Instead of just pointing us to the (awesome) Stock Advocates Fund information page, does anyone from Adobe Stock have recommendations on how to bring this request for these specific kind of images to the attention of the professional photographers who submit content?

Thanks for your time. 🙂

[Abambo]

I can only repeat what I have said before: diversity is important, but it can only come from the contributors inside that community. As I'm living in a typical white community in Europe, I have only the choice to shoot what is present in that community. As I work for an engineering company with a typical male and white population, I know the pain to set up a diverse environment.

[moonlynn]

Hi @Abambo  🙂

Looks like we are talking across two different threads. I'll just say my response can be found here for you and anyone else following along at home, lol.

Cheers!

[jacquelingphoto2017]

Hi @Nathan5E07 ,

Thank you for your contribution. We really appreciate your suggestion. I believe we will try to see how much we can contribute to this category. If you have any more suggestion, please feel free to reach out to us.

If it is not asking too much, can you please list here the search phrases and words you used to search the Adobe platform and what search phrase or words you were successful with on the other platform.

Best wishes

Jacquelin

[Ricky336]

Hello,

This is a user to user forum. So users helping users.

Adobe Stock relies on people who contribute assets - photos, illustrations, vectors, etc. There can only be more diversity if people contribute to more diversity.

As for using search terms, one has to be specific. And the keywords that people use to label their photos have to be specific. 

[Nathan5E07]

Thanks! Yes, I realize that. I saw something on the community home page that seemed to be a form of communication to the community from Adobe. I was trying to help raise awareness of the issue in hopes that they would encourage more diversity by whatever means they currently use. It has always been hard to find quality images of black people, but things have improved. Four years ago, when I did a Google search for simple terms like man or woman, black people would not show on the first 20 to 30 page results. That has changed now, thanks to the efforts of the community as a whole. I am confident that will improve here as well. But not if we don't speak up.

Thanks for the help!

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Adobe are committed to bringing more culturally diverse and inclusive images to Stock. To that end, they created the Stock Advocates Fund.  See below for details.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/stock-contributors/adobe-stock-artist-development-fund-is-now-open-fo...

[Nathan5E07]

This is awesome. Thanks.

[jacquelingphoto2017]

Hi @Nathan5E07 ,

Did you remember to disable safe search?

Regards

Jacquelin