By way of The Online Photographer and the BBC, Northern Ireland’s DUP gives us a prime example of why you might want to assign some budget to hire a photographer and some modeling talent instead of going cheap and buying a generic smiling happy person photo for a few dollars online (or using work licensed under the looser versions of Creative Commons and sourced for free on Flickr).

Sure, there’s a market for that type of photo, but high-profile campaigns where your image is at stake and someone else could use the same photo or one from the same shoot in a way that backfires on you are not that market.

Budget appropriately for your photography needs.