The first issue of IT was published in 1994 and for many years it was a struggle to find suitable, high-quality images. We would often have to rely on scanned photographs sent in by members, or pay out £600 for a disk containing 100 or so rather twee ‘health and beauty’ photos, of which only a fraction were relevant to IT.
That was until the launch of stock photo libraries - most notably Istockphoto in 2002 - which boasted literally thousands of affordable, high-quality images. At last, we could access a broad spectrum of photographs and illustrations, usually costing just a few pounds each!
Interestingly though, despite the introduction of these wonderful stock image libraries, it can still be hard to find technically accurate pictures to accompany our therapy articles. For instance, a search using the keyword ‘massage’ or ‘aromatherapy’ usually throws up at least a few hundred images showing couches strewn with rose petals, ‘therapists’ with long hair and nails, and ‘clients’ who are smiling serenely straight into the camera rather than at least pretending to enjoy their treatment. Thankfully, as most people now have a decent digital camera in one guise or another (even mobile phones have a good camera as standard these days), many of our contributors are able to supply high-quality images to accompany their articles.