What is it that truly drives customers to read your blogs? Of course a catchy title is helpful in reeling people in, but there’s one more thing that can make or break your blog posts: photos. Photos for blogs can be complicated because you need them on demand; there isn’t much time to take your own, let alone take professional-quality photos. Your natural instinct is likely to search for an image on Google, but doing so can possibly lead to copyright risks for your business. Luckily, there are sites that offer free stock photos to businesses to do as they please:
- Pixabay: Pixabay has a wide selection of high quality free images for both commercial and personal use. You can freely use any image off the site without attribution, and in any form you please. The simplicity of the site is what makes it one of my personal favorites. The search bar at the top of the page not only provides optimum accessibility, but also nearly unlimited results.
- Photogen: Photogen images are free for both commercial and personal use. The photos can be used in promotional materials, magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, CD/DVD covers, any form of editorial context, and any digital formal. This website is great because you can modify the photos to meet your requirements. Like Pixabay, Photogen is easy to use with a search bar located at the top right corner of the page, but it can be a bit more confusing due to ads. Deposit Photos has a couple ads on the page, one being a search bar on Photogen’s homepage, which will link you to Deposit Photos’ page for results. These results are not free, so steer clear of these ads!
- Pixel Perfect Digital: Pixel Perfect Digital’s goal is to serve to the design community as much as possible, which is why it provides free stock photos, background textures, and other graphics. All of their images are under a Creative Commons Attribution License which makes them free to share and build upon. While the site doesn’t have a huge selection, it is great for designers who need images to transform.
- Gratisography: All photos on Gratisography were captured by Ryan McGuire, the site creator, on his daily adventures. All photos are high-resolution and can be used for personal and commercial projects. There are no copyright restrictions when using this site. Ryan adds photos weekly, so the selection is always increasing.
- Unsplash: This site has absolutely no restrictions when using its photos. The site dedicates its work to the public domain by waiving all of its rights. This means that you can copy, modify, and distribute the photos off this site in any which way you please. There are ten new photos posted every ten days. The newest set of photos is on the main page for you to scroll through. If none of those photos are what you’re looking for, just click on archive at the top of the page to view the rest of the collection.
- Flickr: Flickr is a photo-sharing website that allows people to post and share photos with others all over the world. There are photos that are off-limits completely, but there are tons under its Creative Commons page that you are able to use as long as you give the photographer credit.