Indian advertising professionals have started relying heavily on image banks. Image banks are a collection of stock photographs and videos which are on offer, after research and study of the society and its changing patterns. Image banks act as barometers to the society’s changing attitudes and predict trends and needs. All this is captured on film. Image banks encourage photographers by throwing open a global gateway to them to showcase their work and receive royalty.

The Hutch Pink puppy, the floating dias in the Deusche Bank ad are stock photographs taken from Getty Images, an international photography image bank. Getty has set up office in India, and is represented by Visage Media Services. Dell, Vipro, SBI have all used Getty images for their campaigns. Image banks are more than just still photos. The shot in Hindi film Rang De Basanti of the three MIGs flying over-head as the actors jump is a stock photograph altered for the film by adding the actors into the frame.

Imagine you wanted Albert Einstein in your ad film or ad commercial. Where would you go shoot him? Go back in time? There is a simpler solution — visage image.com. They have clips of Eiffel Tower, the Buckingham Palace, the San Francisco Bridge, historical events, planets. One can take one’s pick. Another organization that supplies creative images with Indian faces is www.imagesbazar.com. It is set up by Sandeep Maheshwari. It has seven lac plus images in stock. The web-site is fully e-searchable and e-commerce website. The search takes less than two seconds. Another web-site ShotIndia.com has been launched by Sandeep in 2009. Here anybody can upload pictures, and when it is sold, the person receives 50 per cent of the amount. It has more than 3000 registered members who load thousands of images everyday. At present over 6,000 customers in more than 42 countries are using images from Images Bazaar.com and ShotIndia.com for advertising, marketing and publishing. Their all-India toll free number is 1800-11-6869.