It can sometimes be difficult to get the perfect photo for your latest blog post, so it’s great to have these free photography resources on hand to add some life to your writing.
All of the websites below state that their photos are CC0, meaning they are free for anyone to use (commercially or non-commercially) without the need for crediting; they are essentially public domain.
Please note that I’m definitely not encouraging people to upload these photos and claim that they took them, that would suck. That said, they are great for blog post title graphics (such as this one), or backgrounds for websites, quote graphics or presentations.
1. Jay Mantri
Although mostly featuring landscape photography, this site is my favourite of the bunch (probably because I’m rather partial to a big, beautiful, sweeping landscape).
I like that Jay’s photos aren’t perfect, pretentious or too artsy; they’re very peaceful, and it seems like he simply was capturing what was in front of him at that moment.
He uploads 7 new photos each week, but I’m afraid there’s no filter/categories feature, so you’ll just have to scroll through them.
As you can probably tell by the name, this site is purely about food; what could be better?
With plenty of free downloads, there’s no real rush to pay for the premium packages. Just enjoy browsing and becoming steadily more and more hungry…
The name of this site always makes me think it will only feature old black-and-white vintage photos, but there’s actually a whole lot of variety of CC0 images for your perusal.
You can sign up to get new images sent to your email weekly, but again you don’t have many filtering options. You can choose whether you want to see modern or vintage photos, but that’s about it.
4. Pixabay
I’d say this site probably has the lowest quality images (a lot of clip-art/bad Photoshop/dodgy cartoons), but there are some gems to be found. The best thing about it is that you can actually search and filter images, making it much easier to find what you need quickly.
Above is an example of the search results for ‘Phone’ in Pixabay. As you can see, there’s a relatively good mix of cheesy and cartoon-ish, and actually useful stuff.
Very similar to Jay Mantri, Little Visuals is an infinite scrolling site that posts mainly landscape and still life photos.
Many of the photos here are taken at really interesting angles, and there’s some abstract stuff there too that make for great backgrounds. They add 7 new photos a week and you can sign up to have them sent straight to your email if you so wish.
6. Unsplash
Again, very similar style photos to Jay Mantri and Little Visuals, but because they have so many different contributors, there’s a lot of variation to choose from.
These three sites are hosted on Tumblr, hence the infinite scrolling and limited filtering ability.
7. Picjumbo
Finally a website with a search function, tags and categories, woohoo!
There’s also not a cheesy or cartoon-y shot in sight! Every photo is extremely high quality.
I love Gratisography for its fun and quirky mix of images. There’s definitely a certain style going on here, and a lot of the time I see their photos and think, ‘Where on Earth is anyone going to use that??’, but it adds a bit of life to things for sure.
9. Picography
Picography is another infinite scroll-er, but focused much more on macro images and close-ups with shallow depths of field.
I also like that you can click on the photos and see the details of what camera, lens and settings the photography used in case you fancy having a go at it yourself.
10. New Old Stock
Remember me talking about old black-and-white vintage photos? Well this is the site I meant. There’s some really interesting historical stuff in here, some of which could be useful in certain blogging situations.
There’s also some pretty cool satellite photos of space and the moon on there if that’s your thing.
Enjoy exploring these resources!
Thanks for this list! I’m always looking for new photo sources.
There’s so many out there; I really had no idea until a couple of months ago that people would upload photos for others to use for free! I’m very grateful to all those fantastic photographers, and I suppose this post is my way of giving some sort of credit.
Thank you so much! I’ve bookmarked them all. As I don’t have a camera or cameraphone (that works) this is going to be especially helpful for me. Thank you!
No worries! Glad you found it helpful :) I use them all the time for many of my blog posts, as I often don’t have time to take photos myself.
Hi,
Also check out http://www.goodfreephotos.com for thousands of unique public domain photos. Appreciate it if you could add it to your list. Thanks.
Ahh this is a great one! Bookmarked :)
Great article Anna!
I recently started http://fancycrave.com/ as a side project a few months ago. The site consists of completely free stock photos all taken and edited by me. It’s basically a collection of images from my travels around South East Asia and South America (soon). My aim for these photos is to help designers and creative alike. People can use these images for whatever purpose they please.
I do not make any income from the website. I keep things very simple. I list the photo, its tags, the author, and the download link.
I hope you and others will find it valuable. If you see it fit, I’d be very grateful if you could add it to this list. Cheers!
This is great Igor! Thanks so much for commenting :) I’ve added your site to my bookmarks now; you take beautiful photos!
Thanks for the informative review, Anna) I know Pixabay and Unsplash only from the list. If you don’t mind, I’d like to add one more service with HQ themes for webdevelopers – http://www.templatemonster.com/wordpress-themes.php . Would be grateful, if you don’t delete.
Hi there,
Would be awesome if you could insert http://Blogpiks.com in the post. Features over 30,000 free pictures principally business, educational, tech and backdrops.
Cheers!