Photographic images vs. graphic images on the web

Do photographic images get old on the web ?
What I mean is, photographic images placed in a prominent area of a web site like the header, seen by repeat visitors, time and time again. Does the recognition of this one (1) photo get old quickly for our site visitors ? Would it be more effective to use graphic images ? What is the psychology behind this ?

The psychology behind image recognition is simply this:
A photographic image is immediately recognizable to the web site visitor. The visitor sees the image for what it is, literally, because we have spelled it out for them (whell, not nearly as much as using words). The mind works subconsciously recognizing the image and not needing to work very hard to fill in any missing information...in other words...we get it ! Conversely with a graphic image, the site visitor fills in some of the information due to the image's nature...beacause it is a bit more abstract. When the visitor "fills in the blanks" their mind is stimulated, they "make it their own" personalizing the content on even greater levels. One byproduct of this relates to repeat visitors...they end up not seeing the same old site.

So, to sum it all up, when the site visitor's imagination kicks in, it allows them to see slightly different things (using graphic images vs. photographic images)in the same image each time they visit. It also allows a visitor to make the content more..."their content". If your going to design using photographic images in the most prominent place on a website (like a header), one solution for "freshness" would be to cycle a few images using a random rotation. Similar to reading the book vs. watching the movie (a movie spells it out for you)...the book is always better , or at least that's what they say.