Nothing Beats Free Stock Photos!

And, nothing increases the appeal of your website like great images. In fact, weak photos can literally sink what could have been a great design. But, images can get expensive. That is…if you do it the legal way. And, trust me you don’t want to put up some photo you jacked off the internet only to get a cease and desist notice in the mail 2 weeks later from the photos original owner. So, in this post we’re going to talk about some resources with free stock photos for you to use.

Here’s a list of some the sites I’ve found and methods I use when I’m looking for a great picture that won’t cost an arm and a leg.

1. Unsplash

This one is by far my favorite. The quality of the photos are great and there’s an additional set of photos to choose from about every 10 days. The best part. You can do whatever you want with the photos. You could even sell them if you felt so inclined. But, don’t do that…that’s wrong.

But, by all means use these photos to your hearts content. Because of their size they make for great background images. Once you peruse through the selection a time or two you’ll notice that a lot of major sites use these photos to add some spice to their web pages. Feel free to join in.

2. Picjumbo

Picjumbo is a site run by a photographer and designer named Viktor Hanacek. The story goes that a few paid stock photo sites actually rejected his images because of their “poor quality.” So, as a “stick it to ya” kind of gesture he decided to build a site and give away his images as free stock photos to whoever wanted to download them. 3+ million downloads later and it’s fair to say whoever made the decision to reject his photos in the first place might have made a mistake.

The only downside to this site is that there isn’t that much content both in quantity and diversity. But, it is just one guy and the collection gets bigger every week. So, it’s definitely worth a look.

3. Bing

You may be wondering if you read that correctly. Rest assured it’s legit. Bing is a great resource to find free stock photos that are perfectly legal to use on your website. The key is in your search settings. Here’s what I do:

1. Use search words for the types of images I want
2. Click the images tab
3. You’ll find filters under the search bar. Click on the license options.
4. Then click “Free to modify, share and use commercially”

Boom! You’ve got free stock photos served up right on your web browser. You might want to add some additional filters if you need the photos to be larger or have a certain hue. But, for the most part it’s pretty simple!

Freepik

There’s a caveat to this one. If you use freepik’s stuff they require a an author attribution on your web page. BUT, BEFORE YOU GO RUNNING OFF…hear me out. I don’t like having some free loaders link on my page more than anyone else. But, there’s a work around to this one.

Freepik actually uses photos from other websites that give images out as free stock photos. Then they (Freepik that is) turn around and ask you to attribute Freepik for using a photo that doesn’t even belong to them! It’s bogus…I know.

So, what I do is search for photos. When I find one I like I click on the authors name. You can find it right under the name of the image. From their you’ll go to the author’s page. If it’s not a legit freepik author it will have a link to the website Freepik swiped it from. And, if that’s the case, you’re free to use as many of these free stock photos without any sign of attribution.

Beautiful right?

So, the next time you’re in the market for some good images check out these websites for some free stock photos. And, with the money you save you can always do some good like donate to Charity Water

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