One of my favorite stock photography websites, Bigstockphoto.com, recently changed their pricing structure to allow for single purchases at a fixed price. Typically discount or low priced royalty-free stock photo websites sell photos based on a credit system, and you need to buy a chunk of credits at one time. In the face of competition, Bigstock has apparently decided that this new pricing structure will give them the edge over similar stock photo websites.
The problem is that since the transition there has been an obvious drop in the quality of their offerings. Normally I would need to wade through 50 – 100 horrible photos to find a good one. Now, the good ones are gone. I’m assuming Big Stock needed to cut costs to make this move, and in doing so messed with quality. Now I can’t use what they offer, and I can only assume that other designers are in the same boat.