Nowadays, everyone has to use –at some point- images for a reason or
another; whether you are a student looking for a high-quality presentation, a
website designer, an employ that has to prove his excellence or simply you are
marketing a product on your website or your blog.
Ultimately you will find yourself searching for a supply of high-quality,
well-taken, color-rich pictures and after all free one without any restrictions;
those are stock photos.
What are stock photos? You may ask, well, stock photos are pictures which
are not purposely taken for a clear objective rather than general idea and they
are free for reuse (well, most of them!), which lets the user the freedom of choosing
the context, with high quality captions and artistic touch.
However, with the diversity of stock photos sites, you may encounter sites
with low quality captions or useless images, thus the need to find the right
level of quality that you are asking for and the richness of content.
Without further do, here are some sites well-known for their features:
Google image search (with Search
Tools option)
That seems weird to include Google in this list, but the gigantic search
motor has a special feature that few people know how to use efficiently: write
your desired image on the search bar, click enter and voilà! Thousands and
thousands of pictures rise in milliseconds, easy. Right?
If you do that –Like the majority of people- you may find yourself violating
the terms of use, as a lot of the displayed images are under license, to avoid
that, use Google Search Tools, click on Usage Rights, then Labeled for Reuse (
for commercial or noncommercial reuse, as you want).
Google then shows you available free images from different stock images
sites, not only you have avoided usage rights dilemma, but you have a huge
diversity of pictures, right in front of your face
Unsplash
In my opinion, Unsplash is certainly one of the excellent free stock photos available on the net, giving
you the freedom to choose from more than 50,000 pictures.
These pictures are of the highest quality, particularly when you consider that
the photographers are professionals and sweat to capture the right angles, to
have the cheerful colors and the best quality, making a mesmerizing piece of
art, and most of times for free reuse.
Moreover, the site’s running team does not allow whatever picture on their
site, instead they look at each submission before making the decision: Should
it be posted or not.
Pixabay
Another wonderful site; Pixabay, it presents an ample collection of images
are all put under Creative Commons Zero, which means they are free to download
and reuse.
Photographers worldwidely upload a variety of images, which also differ in
quality, with the site’s team filtration of mediocre ones, that offers you the possibility
to find something applicable or unique for free.
Like for the previous one, it is not required to login in for download, but
it will ask for you to prove you are not a robot (which obviously you aren’t!)
for each single download (unless you choose tosetup an account with them).
EyeEm
One of the most perfect stock sites, especially when it comes to creativity
and artistic perspectives. EyeEm has a special understanding to
stock photos based on professionalism and art.
The website provides an amazing catalogue of enormously beautiful and high
quality business stock photos. Their search menu is unique and simple, helping
you identifying exactly what you want with an artistic touch on it.
Images on this site aren’t free, but if you want to go the extra mile and
haven’t a problem with sparing a few bucks, you know now where to look.
Gratisography
Gratis means free in Spanish, and the site’s pictures are! All the pictures
found on the site are taken by the same person, Ryan McGuire.
“Ryan is passionate about building community
through art and he gifts his work with the world for the friendships, unique
collaborations, and smiling faces. Explore Ryan’s complete portfolio of
whimsical creations at www.mcguiremade.com.” now you know who is Ryan by his
own words!
Even though the site is his creation, he incessantly uploads new stock
photos without any copyright restrictions. His goal is to offer high quality
stock photos for everyone to use.
These pictures are often original and not your standard engine search
results, He uses a lot of creativity, patience and artistry making them more special
to use.
FreeStocks
Keeping it up with free stuff, all of the high-quality photos that are
available on FreeStocks have been put under Creative Commons Zero, so there is no restriction
concerning their usage.
Furthermore, it says right on their homepage free stock photos “feel free to use them both in personal and commercial projects”. So you can use their photos for FREE regardless the purpose of usage; whether you are using them for a personal project or a business project.
The images are categorized into categories, making it easier to find the precise type of stock photo that you were hoping to download.
Pexels
Pexels offers you free and high quality
stock photos, a real goldmine for anyone looking for pertinent images.
The sweet bonus of this site is that the images have all been organized and
labeled; making the task easy for you for finding the chosen one. You have also
the ability to browse through their “discover pages” if you are searching new
ideas inspiring your query.
Keep in mind that a variety of different photographers worldwidely contribute
to Pexels, meaning that you will not a limited certain type of stock photo to
choose from, in its place, you are offered more interesting and richer stock
photos to select from.
Pexels gives you amazing free stock videos that can easily be used in
marketing business, saving you from finding clips or creating them yourself.
Death to Stock Photos
Ending with this unique site with a different
approach: deathtothestockphoto.com, this source of images
has a completely unusual perspective aiming for originality and creativity.
Instead of giving you a search engine to search for your image and to
choose from a wide catalogue, when you subscribe to their site, you have unlimited
access to more than 3500 images and videos, plus they send out photograph
packs each month with more than 20 pictures.
Their photographers are professionals that travel all around the globe to
collect these unique shots that you will never find anywhere else. So if you
are looking for authenticity and capable of sparing dozen bucks per month here
is you clear choice.
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