Sending the Right Message with Stock Photos
Let's Add a Little Flash to Your Site
Your website is a virtual representation of your business. You've got all of your ideas and content posted for the world to see like a giant billboard in cyberspace. Now all you need is a good attention grabber. Luckily there are a ton of places we can go to for attention grabbing photography.
What Quality Stock Photos do for Your Site
If your website represents your business, then the photos on your website act as a virtual window display. Not only do photos attract site visitors, they also invite them to stay and explore your attractive site. Stock photos are great and cost effective way to add some style to your already awesome website.
Stock photos add the most to your website when they are used effectively. When it comes to picking a stock photo for your site, you want to ask yourself two things:
Is this consistent with my brand?
Does this photo have visual storytelling that adds to my site/page?
Brand consistency and visual storytelling goes a long way. If used effectively, the stock photos you use can greatly improve user experience. If you are using stock photos paired with pieces of text, you'll be able to improve your SEO for that page as long as the photo matches the text it is paired with.
Where to Find Stock Photos
Before we talk about where you can go to get great stock photography, let's talk about the legal side of things first. Not every photo you find on the internet is free to use for your website. Some photos require attribution or payment for use. We typically try to get stock photos that are free from copyright restrictions or licensed under creative commons public domain (CC01) which you can read more about here.
The sites we are about to list all have photos that are free to copy, modify, and distribute for commercial purposes, but we do encourage you to do your own research on any photos you want to use on your site.
Now for the Fun Part. Here's Our List of 13 Great Stock Photo Libraries
Unsplash: We personally love Unsplash. They offer high-resolution photo collections and are known as one of the best sources for stock photography
Pixabay: Another site with a wide variety of stock photography. Pixabay also offers stock vectors and other forms of art.
Reshot: Reshot is a stock photography website that was initially created for startups. Reshot is a great place to find photos that aren't tacky or too "stocky".
Focasstock: All photos on Foca are free to use. The photos mainly focus around nature, city scenes, workspaces, and macro photography.
Pexels: Pexels is an easily explorable website with tons of stock photos licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Stocksnap: All photos on Stocksnap are free to use without any attribution. They add photos to their site everyday to keep it fresh.
Freepik: Freepik is a great place for graphic resources. All photos and vectors on Freepik are free to use under creative commons public domain.
ISORepublic: ISORepublic provides curated collections of high quality photos under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
Freephotos.cc: Freephotos is a resource that allows you to search for creative commons photos to use on your projects.
Coverr: Coverr is a free resource for high quality videos. These videos are free to use on any of your projects.
NewOldStock: NewOldStock is a free resource for vintage photos from public archives.
Gratisography: Gratisography has free stock photos that you can use on personal and commercial projects. Photos found in their collection are definitely on the quirky side of things.
Picography: Picography is one of the top sources for free stock photography. Their collection includes high resolution free photos for use in any of your projects.
The Dos and Don'ts of Using Stock Photography
Stock photography has the potential to take your site from being bland to eye catching in the time it takes to refresh the page but, if used incorrectly, it can also hurt the look of your site. Here are our quick dos and don'ts of using stock photography.
Do…
Use high quality images. The photos you use represent your brand so make sure you're using nothing but the best.
Show positive imagery. Positive imagery is a great way to make your site seem inviting to anyone who comes to visit.
Always check after you post. Seriously though. ALWAYS check your photos after you post them.
Don’t…
Use images just to use images. Having more photos on your site doesn't automatically make it better.
Use too many images. Fewer, bolder photos are better than a dozen small ones. Remember, quality works way better than quantity.
Be cliché or use cliché photos. Stock photos range from the downright weird to the absolutely wonderful. Use photos that represent your brand that don't feel out of place or tacky.
With great stock photos comes great responsibility. There are a lot of stock photo collections out there with different rules on how to use them so make sure to read up on the licenses from any site you use photos from.
Happy stock photo hunting friends! Until next time.
