This was an interesting read. I’d never even heard of Unsplash until I joined Medium. I’ve always used Shutterstock. I haven’t perused the Unsplash site yet, but I plan to do so once my Shutterstock subscription runs out because, quite frankly, I’d rather get the pictures for free and also, after reading your article, I feel in many ways Unsplash has a similar philosophy to Medium.

As far as your point that some of the photos are cheesy, I think in many ways the responsibility for this goes to the writer, because sometimes we have the tendency to go for the obvious when illustrating our stories. At least I do (but I’m trying to change that).