No matter what type of creator you are, chances are you have needed to use stock photos at some point. Be it for a blog post, marketing materials, or other creative projects, stock photos play an integral part in brand building and creative works.
As a black creative you’ve probably already come to the realization that the standard model in most stock photos looks nothing like you or anyone you know for that matter. She’s young, thin, edited and either racially ambiguous or Caucasian.
It can be frustrating to have to sort through tons of images of picture-perfect models posing in board meetings, at the kitchen counter, or at the spa, before finally finding something that’s almost just-right for your project.
You’ve probably also realized that the stock photos that actually feature people like you are overused across numbers of websites, marketing materials and publications due to such a limited selection.
Canva is looking to change this experience for groups of people who are usually an afterthought. Canva now has what is called the Natural Women Collection. This collection features women we typically don’t see in stock photos including women of color, women with disabilities, women with scars and women whose skin is covered in tattoos.
What’s also nice is that these aren’t the picturesque photos we’re used to, you know, the stereotypical ones that are so edited the models don’t even look like themselves anymore. The Natural Women Collection does its best to show the featured women in a very natural, everyday light.
Upon releasing the Natural Women Collection, Canva stated that they wanted to celebrate women in their natural state. The goal was to include women that didn’t fit the mold of the cliché stock photo model. In order to reflect the world that we live in, one of diversity, Canva cast models that challenge the traditional Eurocentric standard of beauty and perfection in media.
The collection includes women of all backgrounds and experiences, including a Cancer Survivor, who lost her hair to chemotherapy; a woman with Down syndrome, who competes in beauty pageants; and a woman with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, who has “recognized [her] body’s own beauty as well as [its] grandeur and strength” through modeling for Canva’s latest collection.
The Natural Women Collection also features Body Positive women, women who embrace their body hair and say no to the razor, queer-identifying women, women of all ages, women with stretch marks, and women with natural hairstyles.
With Canva expanding their collection of stock photos, creatives and brands alike can now access a broader selection of photos. This means we’ll probably stop seeing so many different publications and websites reusing the same photos but it also means that we are no longer forced to settle and take what we can get.
Right now, the Natural Women Collection is fairly new and is still growing. Canva is looking for photographers who’d like to contribute to the collection by featuring more natural models with varying looks. Canva hopes to shift the culture of stock photography to be more inclusive and if you’d like to be a part of this evolution you can apply here.
Jasmine Danielle is a Los Angeles based dancer and fitness trainer. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has studied with FiTour, the National Federation of Personal Trainers, and the Equinox Group Fitness Training Institute. Jasmine is currently a Group Fitness Instructor for Equinox, Everybody Los Angeles, and Sandbox Fitness. Her fitness modalities include ballet, dance cardio, barre fitness, TRX, treadmill interval training, cardio kickboxing, jump rope, indoor cycling, and metabolic conditioning.
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