Imagery choices substantially affect perceived authenticity and trustworthiness. The patterns that consistently produce good outcomes: **Use real photography of your business.** Real team photos with names and roles, real office or workspace photos, real client work (with permission), real process photos showing how the work actually happens. Original photography produces immediate authenticity that stock cannot replicate. Investment in a professional photo shoot ($1,500–$5,000 for a half-day session covering team headshots and environmental photos) typically produces 5–10 years of usable imagery. **Avoid obvious stock imagery.** The patterns that immediately signal stock: generic handshakes; suspiciously diverse smiling teams in unbranded settings; people looking at laptops with surprised excitement; isolated subjects on white backgrounds; concept imagery (light bulbs, puzzle pieces, jigsaw connections, growth charts). These images don't add credibility; they subtract it because users recognize them as decoration rather than authentic representation. **When stock is necessary, choose well.** Some sites genuinely need stock imagery (early-stage businesses without budget for original photography, niche topics where the company can't photograph the subject themselves). When using stock, pay for premium sources (Stocksy, Adobe Stock Premium, Death to Stock, Twenty20) where image quality is higher and overuse is less common. Avoid the most-licensed images (a quick reverse image search reveals when an image is used on hundreds of competing sites). Choose images that feel candid and contextual rather than posed and decorative. **Real client work and case studies.** With permission, photographs of actual deliverables, actual client environments, actual team interactions with clients add substantial credibility. Brand permission can be tricky in regulated industries (legal, medical, financial) — get explicit written approval before publishing identifiable client imagery. **AI-generated imagery in 2026.** AI image generation has improved substantially since 2023. Pure AI-generated imagery on business sites is increasingly common but has tradeoffs: it's quickly recognizable to sophisticated users, it doesn't establish authenticity (AI images don't show your real team or real work), and AI-image overuse is now itself a stock-imagery-like pattern. AI imagery can work well for: abstract conceptual illustrations where literal photography isn't possible; backgrounds and textures; thematic imagery clearly stylized as illustration. AI-generated 'photo-realistic team' or 'photo-realistic case study' imagery should be avoided — it's both inauthentic and detectable. **Image performance optimization.** - Serve modern formats (WebP, AVIF) with fallbacks for legacy browsers. - Resize images to actual display dimensions (don't serve a 4000px image to a 400px container). - Compress aggressively without visible quality loss (Squoosh, ImageOptim, or build-time pipelines). - Implement lazy loading for below-fold images (`loading="lazy"` attribute). - Use responsive images via `srcset` and `sizes` attributes so different devices load appropriately-sized variants. - Provide width and height attributes on every `<img>` element to prevent layout shift during load. **Alt text.** Every image needs an appropriate alt attribute. Decorative images use empty alt (`alt=""`). Functional images describe the function (`alt="Search"` on a magnifying glass icon). Content images describe the content meaningfully (`alt="Dr. Sarah Chen, family physician at Bridlewood Medical Clinic"`). Avoid generic alt text like 'image' or 'photo.' **Image SEO.** Beyond alt text: descriptive filenames (sarah-chen-family-physician.jpg, not IMG_4827.jpg); structured data where applicable; image sitemaps for image-heavy sites. Image search traffic can be a meaningful channel for visual industries (interior design, food, real estate, retail). **Diversity and representation.** For Canadian businesses, imagery should reflect Canadian demographic reality — both because it's accurate and because users notice when imagery doesn't represent them or their community. Stock imagery often defaults to demographic patterns that don't reflect contemporary Canadian cities; original photography or carefully chosen stock can correct this.