Cheesy stock photos look worse than a list of dense bullets. If you need an image of a normal-looking person here some things I try:
- Try other sources than stock image sites, I put a number of free image sources here
- Use adjectives to find an expression you want: “calm”, “proud”, avoid terms such as “happy”, “smiling” which will instantly return cheesy images
- Use images that do not reveal the face (taken from the back, or a frontal crop)
- Avoid any image with a photoshopped, fake background or added graphics
- If you find one image that sort of works, dig deeper and bring up all the images that were made with the same model, maybe there is a better one hiding somewhere
- Use images of kids, they are almost always spontaneous
Image from WikiPedia
