Have you been wondering about how others find stunning photos for their websites? Are you tired of using the same old ugly photos for your website headers and blog posts? Then you’ve come to the right place.
In this article, we’ll tell you about 10 of the best free stock photo sites for finding fresh and attractive images for your website and blog posts.
You can download these stock photos free of charge and use them as header images for your website, feature them in your blog posts, use as a website background, create social media posts, and do a whole lot more.
But first, let’s figure out what stock photos are and the main benefits of using them.
What Are Stock Photos And Why Use Them?
Simply put, stock photos are images of people, places, objects, and nature, captured by professional photographers. These photos can be used to design many types of content, including advertisements, creative projects, websites, personal designs, and more.
Usually, stock photos come with a price. For example, on a stock photo site like iStock, you’ll have to pay around $12 to buy a single stock photo. Other sites like Getty Images charge even higher prices for stock photos depending on how you use them.
However, you don’t have to spend that much money to get a great-looking image for your WordPress website background or a header image. Now, there are sites that give away premium-quality stock images for free.
Like that popular saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Using images on your website is a great way to express yourself and quickly attract the attention of your visitors.
What’s The Catch?
You’ll find amazingly beautiful stock images on the sites listed below. The images on these are so good that you’ll even find it hard to believe they are free.
Well, you better believe it because they are completely free to use. You can use them for your personal projects, client projects, or even commercial projects, without having to pay anything or even attributing to the author of the image.
So, what’s the catch? There’s no catch!
People got tired of paying for stock photos that look ugly and fake. Then photographers started giving away high-quality photos free of charge, just as a service to the community. That’s how these great free stock photo sites came to exist.
10 Best Free Stock Photos Sites
#1 Unsplash
Unsplash is one of the most popular free stock photos sites on the web. This site contains high-quality stock photos in all categories, including nature, city, technology, people, startups, and more. The site has a section called Collections, where users can create and share their favorite photo collections.
Unsplash also gets updated with new photos almost every day. Be sure to bookmark and check the site for new photos.
#2 Pexels
Pexels is another popular free stock photo site that offers thousands of beautiful stock photos for free. The site has several options for browsing photos, including most searched photos and even search by color option. Pexels also allows you to download photos in different sizes, including custom sizes that you choose.
#3 Pixabay
Pixabay is a free stock photo site that has a large community of users. The site currently hosts over 920,000 free stock images. However, the quality of most those images are not always at the best since the site allows its users to upload photos without any limits.
#4 Gratisography
Gratisography has quite an unusual collection of stock photos. You’ll immediate see that most of the photos on this site are unlike any stock photo you’ve ever seen before. This site will help you find truly unique photos for your WordPress site. All of the photos on this site were photographed by a photographer named Ryan McGuire. They are completely free to use however you like.
#5 StockSnap
StockSnap is a site filled with high-resolution images of all kinds. The site also gets updated every week with hundreds of new photos. You can find photos of all categories on this site.
#6 LittleVisuals
LittleVisuals is a unique stock photo site that mostly features handpicked photos of landscape and nature photos. Unfortunately the person behind it died, so it is no longer being updated, but you can still download existing photos.
#7 Startup Stock Photos
Startup Stock is a site that features a massive collection of photos related to startups and entrepreneurship. The site has all kinds of photos related to startups, including office environments, meetings, people, devices, whiteboards, and more.
#8 Stokpic
The main feature of Stokpic is that it has a wide range of categories, including fashion, landscapes, backgrounds, and even black and white, for easily browsing and exploring the site to find great photos. All photos on Stokpic are free for commercial and personal use.
#9 Death To Stock
Similar to LittleVisuals, Death To Stock also sends out its latest stock photos to its subscribers via email. Signing up for its premium membership will allow you to browse its exclusive collection of photos at $15 per month.
#10 FreeStockPhotos.org
FreeStockPhotos.org is a new stock photo site that features several hundred photos of people, technology, gadgets, office supplies, nature, sports, and more. All photos are released under public domain.
Conclusion
Don’t be afraid to edit, modify, or copy these photos. Under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and public domain licenses, you have the freedom to do anything with the photos.
There’s no need to spend money on stock photos anymore. Using these great free sites, you can easily find gorgeous images to create beautiful header images for your WordPress website and blog posts, on any topic you want.
1 Comment
I prefer using Pixabay: a lot of quality photos, easy to search and download.
Sad that LittleVisuals has such a tragic story behind it 🙁