Stock photography plays an integral part in producing graphics for your website, blog, adverts and much more, and while some stand out from the crowd in terms of quality, others can be extremely cheesy and widely overused.
They can also be very expensive, so I’ve compiled a list of my five favourite websites for free stock photos, all of which are 100% free to use however you like, including commercial projects:
Unsplash
With over 200,000 free high-resolution images, it’s easy to see why Unsplash is one of the most popular free stock-photo resources. New, hand-selected images are added every day by more than 41,000 generous photographers, so you’re bound to find the right photo for your needs.
Pexels
Every month, over 3,000 new stock photos are added to Pexels to continuously grow their beautiful library. To make things easy, all photos are listed under the Creative Commons Zero license, meaning you can use them however you want, including commercial purposes. Pexels photos are also tagged, searchable and easy to find through the discovery page.
Pixabay
Pixabay offers free images and videos through a vibrant community of creatives. All of their content is copyright free under the Creative Commons Zero license, and with over 1,100,000 photos, vectors, illustrations and videos, there’s something for everyone at Pixabay.
StockSnap
Hundreds of high resolution images are added to StockSnap every week, all of which are again free from copyright restrictions, meaning you can use them however you like. StockSnap also breaks the search options down into different sections, so you can search by name, date, downloads, views, favourites, and even trending.
Picjumbo
Picjumbo was created by a young photographer who made a website solely so he could give his incredible photos away to the world, for free. You can search through a range of categories on the site, from abstract to technology, fashion to nature, and many more. Definitely worth a look.
