Need a beautiful image for your website, blog or digital ad? Need it FREE? Need it yesterday?
Stock photography can get a bad rap (and sometimes rightly so…), but not all stock photos feature awkward looking characters in unnatural poses, doing completely nonsensical things. Many stock images are beautifully composed and captivating, and well worth using to add interest on your blog, website or other visual collateral.
We’ve gathered together a list of our top 10 picks for free stock image collections, so you can quickly and easily find and download stunning images without spending a cent.
All of the following collections provide their images under the creative commons public domain or the Creative Commons Zero license. This means you can modify photos and use them commercially, and no attribution is required. You don’t even have to sign up to access and download. Simple!
Gratisography
Gratisography features a quirky and beautiful collection of images taken by New York visual artist and photographer Ryan McGuire. Browse by popular categories, new images, or try a ‘magic auto search’ to find exactly what you’re looking for.
McGuire offers his pictures under similar terms as Creative Commons Zero, and doesn’t require any attribution (though you can buy him a coffee via his site if you really love his stuff!).
Kaboom Pics
Kaboom Pics is a collection of high quality images, free for “bloggers, website owners, small businesses, freelancers & social media ninjas” Basically, anyone can use them without attribution. Search by keyword, browse popular categories, or view similar images by tag. Kaboom Pics also offers themed photo bundles, so you can download a pack of relevant high-res images in seconds.
Life of Pics
Life of Pix is the brainchild of the Leeroy advertising agency in Montreal, supported by their own network of photographers. Though there are no options for filtering and refining your search, their images are so beautiful you won’t mind wading through the collection as you browse.
They also offer a sister site – Life of Vids – which provides royalty free videos, clips and loops.
Negative Space
Looking for an image of a particular hue? With Negative Space, you can browse their selection of high-res stock photos while refining by category, colour and even copy space position (if you’re creating an ad, for example).
New Old Stock
Sometimes old is better! New Old Stock offers a library of vintage photos from the public archives, free of known copyright restrictions. Given their nature, the resolution of images is lower than other sites, but these can still be great for web use.
Though the site itself doesn’t have a search bar – meaning you’ll need to scroll through the collection to find something you like – you can always do a site search by typing “site:http://nos.twnsnd.co (plus your keyword)” into Google to narrow down your results.
For example, typing site:http://nos.twnsnd.co new york into Google revealed 8 results – one of which was the image above, depicting a ticker tape parade for Apollo 11 (in New York).
Picjumbo
Search by keyword, browse the latest photos, browse by category, or name your own price and download all 1000+ images to your own library for a limited time. Picjumbo also offers a cool ‘test drive’ feature, which allows you to see how each image might look overlaid with different formats of text.
Pixabay
Pixabay offers more than 700,000 free images, videos, vectors and illustrations. Browse stock images by category, explore by photographer, check out the Editor’s choice, or search by keyword. Refine your image search by category, orientation, size and colour, or view related image by tag.
You’ll need to enter a security captcha to download your image, but you can bypass this process by registering with the site.
Splitshire
A digital collection of high quality free photos by web designer Daniel Nanescu, Splitshire can be browsed by category, recent photos, tags and ‘top best photos’.
StockSnap
StockSnap offers a huge selection of high-resolution stock images, and is easy to navigate by keyword search, popular search, and trending images. You can sort search results by upload date, views, downloads and favourites, or sign up to have their most popular images of the week emailed to your inbox.
Unsplash
Providing a vivid array of “free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos”, Unsplash is easy to navigate via search, or browsing their latest images or themed collections.
Stock photos are a fantastic way to make visual impact – but sometimes only a professional, tailored image will do you brand justice. Market My Company provides professional photography and videography services to showcase your products with style. Contact us now for more information.