RF Archives - Design Theory

5 Websites for Free Photos to use on your Website or Blog

All Posts, Blog, Free Stuff, Photography, Web Design

Your readers are more visual now then ever. Captivating them with great headlines is key, and so is capturing their attention with an interesting photo or graphic that goes along with the headline. Full disclosure, we actually use these websites along with paid RF websites like iStock and 123RF for our projects as well as client projects. Reason being is that there are a good amount of free resources for images online with creative commons licensing, but there are times when you’ll need to purchase a specific image that just isn’t found anywhere on the free market.

Pixabay

“Free images and videos you can use anywhere

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.”

What I really like about this site is the free videos. Don’t get me wrong, they have a great library of photos to choose from with a broad range, but lets face it video is where it’s at these days and getting to use some HD quality ones for your project will make a great impression for your viewers.

StockSnap.io

“Hundreds of high resolution images added weekly. Free from copyright restrictions.“

This is a very clean and easy to navigate and search user generated stock photography website. It’s easy and quick to create an account, and I encourage that you do so that as you download photos you take the time to “like” the photographs that you come across. As a photographer this means a lot to us!

PhotoPin

“Search millions of Creative Commons photos and add them to your blog posts easily.”

Their headline pretty much says it all. Catering to web creatives and bloggers alike, you’ll find plenty of great images and photos to use on your websites here.

Stockvault

“NEED FREE STOCK PHOTOS FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT?

We are a stock photo community where photographers & designers can share their own photos and artwork with people from all over the world.”

If you’re looking for really great high quality photography from photographers around the world, you’ll enjoy this website. I’ve seen a bunch of highly edited and HDR photographs posted here for free use.

StartupStock Photos

“Startup Stock Photos was started as an outlet for photos we were already taking on a regular basis. It’s grown to be much more than that. People and organization all over the world have used these photos to make some really awesome things. We’re happy to have helped.”

If you’re looking for photos and images with that “startup” or agency look, you’re going to enjoy this website. From wooden desk tables to white board and monitor screens, you’ll no doubt find an image or two to fit your project. While there isn’t a search feature or a huge library of photos, the ones that this photographer uploaded for your free use are fantastic.

What did you think of the list? Hopefully this helps you if you were looking for some great sources for photography and images. Remember to give credit back to the website/author of the photos you choose to use. While what you find may be free, what it does cost time, expertise, and skill to do photography. Having credit and recognition goes a long way!

Are the pictures on your site legal to use?

Web Design

Anytime you see something with “legal” in it, it normally grabs your attention. I don’t mean to scare you with this one, but it’s something we do need to go over. A lot of websites out there have images on them. A lot of those images may not be approved from the person or company who actually own the images. There are some heavy consequences if you happen to use them without permission or consent. Similar with plagiarized content.

I remember years ago when I was in high school having to do book reports and essays. ( I won’t tell you how long ago that was though, lol.) Come up with a great 3.5 structured essay, then for the cover I’d search the internet for a picture to use below my title. Back then there wasn’t Google so I’d use Netscape to go to Yahoo or Lycos. I’d use the class printer to print out my picture and staple it to my report and I’d be good to go.

Lets fast forward to websites and blogs of today. Sure everyone has a website. If you don’t have a website, your next phone call should be to us because we’d like to know why not. There are many sites and blogs that use pictures they found on Google images that may have been saved and used without the content providers notice. Now most of this content wouldn’t be sold or resold, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Also, just because an image is found on a search engine, doesn’t make it legal for you to use on your own site. Even if the site you found it on wasn’t the originator or royalty free site.

“Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.” (Wikipedia source)

There’s a whole bunch of RF sites out there for you to use. Some free, but most will have a premium to pay for credits to then use to download images. These images can range from people, events, buildings, vectors, logos, and more. To give you a few sites check the list below.

Free RF sites:

Premium RF Sites:

The last thing you want to happen is getting a cease order in the mail or email about some content you have on your website. Similar to website copy, graphics and images are protected too. And just so that you know, there are web programs and bots that troll websites looking for unauthorized content. Similar to like a facial scan or fingerprint recognition system, these applications work around the clock looking for content that may not be authorized in their databases.