You may know by now – people (aka consumers) are more likely to engage with and share visual content on social media. The reasons? Well, our brains process visual info 60,000 times faster than we process text. What does this mean for your marketing? You need photography! And, you don’t need to be or hire a professional photographer to accomplish this!
Many popular brands use stock photos on their blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook etc. Thankfully, there’s been a growing number of websites with beautiful stock photography popping up all over the web. The best part is, we want to show you where to get them for FREE.
But first, when using stock photos please make sure you pay attention to the websites copyright rules. You should get familiar with different copyright or license requirements and how they apply to each picture or website. You do not want to get in trouble with the copyright Gods.
For Creative Commons copyright licenses – visit this website.
This article also has some good content regarding online images copyright and fair use laws.
Now that you know a little more about copyright and what to look for when choosing images on the web – it’s time to help you find your stock photos. We have done our best and curated a list of 8 awesome websites for free stock photos (Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license).
Free Stock Photos
- PEXELS:
This site is one of our favorite FREE sites. All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means the pictures are completely free to be used for any legal purpose.
- The pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use.
- You can modify, copy and distribute the photos.
- All without asking for permission or setting a link to the source. So, attribution is not required.
The only restriction is that identifiable people may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive, unless they give their consent. You should also make sure the depicted content (people, logos, private property, etc.) is suitable for your application and doesn’t infringe any rights.
- PIXABAY:
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.
- STOCKSNAP.IO:
StockSnap.io has a large selection of beautiful free stock photos and high resolution images. StockSnap adds hundreds of images on a daily basis and all photos are released under creative commons public domain – no attribution required.
- UNSPLASH:
All photos published on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.
- BURST:
Burst is a free stock photo site that is powered by Shopify. All the photos on their platform are offered under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which means you’re welcome to use the photos for any purpose. They built the site to empower designers, developers, bloggers and entrepreneurs to create stunning websites and marketing campaigns. You can use these pictures for absolutely anything — hero images on your blog or online store, backgrounds for school projects, shots for social media campaigns, client work, and beyond. Under the Creative Commons Zero license, you aren’t required to credit the photographer or Burst.
- Negative Space:
Negative Space provides 20 new photos every week released under Creative Commons CC0. The photos are searchable and can be sorted by category, copy space and color.
- KaboomPics:
Kaboom Pics offers a wide variety of high quality free stock photos including abstract, city/architecture, fashion, food, landscapes and more. Photos can be used for commercial purposes but cannot be sold or redistributed.
- Foodies Feed:
FoodiesFeed offers thousands of beautiful realistic free food pictures in high resolution. It’s the perfect stock photo site for food bloggers.
To Summarize
As you can see – stock photo websites are no longer filled with just cheesy photos. If you take a few minutes to search thru one of these websites, we are sure you will find photos that you fall in love with.
These websites have made life so much easier in the marketing, design and blogging world and it will do the same for you in your quest for the perfect (free) photos!
Do you use stock photos in your marketing pitches, let us know how it’s worked out for you in the comments below.