10 Sources of Free Photography for Your Blog

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.

 

2. Foodie’s Feed

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…

 

3. Public Domain Archive

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.

 

5. Little Visuals

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.

^ Image credit: MTS Ltd

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.

 

8. Gratisography

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!