Free stock images of serious conversations

December 7, 2020 9:03 AM

My holy grail of free stock/high-res images is a pic of two adults (preferably, with at least one who presents as a woman) who appear to be friends talking to each other, but are NOT laughing/smiling. I can only find a couple of them- can you help me find more?

I've gone deep into Pexels and Unsplash, and checked a bunch of the other sites (e.g., Pixabay) that have a smaller selection, and these are the only two I've found.

Things I don't want:
*People in business suits or obviously at a work meeting (e.g., a laptop in the picture)
*People who appear to be therapists and clients (e.g., they're sitting in chairs far across from each other, one person is holding a pen and a notebook). This one would be fantastic if not for the pen/notebook.
*More than 2 people in the photo
*People who are obviously wealthy (e.g., in fancy homes, wearing fancy/flashy outfits)
*People who are arguing with each other

posted by quiet coyote to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

If candids are okay, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA licenses will do, and Flickr is high-res enough (any or all of which may be false), consider this search and ring changes on it, maybe?
posted by humbug at 9:15 AM on December 7, 2020

Best answer: "serious conversation" on Adobe Stock has some nice ones

https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=serious+conversation

https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=serious+conversation&asset_id=54917889
https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=serious+conversation&asset_id=72522397
https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=serious+conversation&asset_id=197355680
https://stock.adobe.com/search?k=serious+conversation&asset_id=78923381 (both dudes, but I like this one, too)
posted by lindseyg at 9:18 AM on December 7, 2020

Try throwing the word "sympathy" into your searches. You'll get a lot of people comforting crying people, but also a lot of what you're looking for.
posted by phunniemee at 9:19 AM on December 7, 2020

Best answer: When I am looking for people for stock images I have a few go-tos including the Gender Spectrum collection from Vice. Not sure if direct link to images will work but possibly this or this or this? (some of those may read as arguing and I don't know how cisgender people need to be, but this is a great resource) There's also Disabled and Here which has a few that may work but this one was the one that seemed closest.
posted by jessamyn at 9:20 AM on December 7, 2020 [9 favorites]

Best answer: Do they have to be facing the camera?
posted by oceano at 9:25 AM on December 7, 2020

How about this one of two folks at a coffee shop from Nappy.co - "Beautifully diverse stock photos"?
posted by rogerroger at 11:22 AM on December 7, 2020

FYI I opened the "therapist listening to client" link before reading your blurb about it. To my uninformed eye it just looked like 2 friends talking. I did not notice the pen or the book until I re-read your question.

Could you use the pic if the pen was edited out?
posted by i_mean_come_on_now at 11:22 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

(memailed you)
posted by i_mean_come_on_now at 12:26 PM on December 7, 2020

Here are a few.
posted by xo at 12:33 PM on December 7, 2020

Interesting discussion and deep conversation are giving me good hits.
posted by J.R. Hartley at 2:10 PM on December 7, 2020

Response by poster: These are great, thank you so much! My clinical trial now has a shiny new website featuring these photos! I marked comments as best answers when I ended up using one or more of the linked pics.

And special thanks to i_mean_come_on_now who edited that pic for me!

Y'all are the best.
posted by quiet coyote at 7:46 PM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]