Picture This! Free Stock Photos and Where to Find Them

Images are an important part of developing your online presence. Whether it be a website page, blog post, or social media post, adding an image can certainly liven up your content. That being said, when publishing content online, it’s imperative to make sure you are sharing content that is either yours or that you have permission to use. Using an image that you do not have permission to use can get you into serious legal troubles. Luckily, there are plenty of sources that offer free stock images for personal and commercial use, here are a few of my favorites:

 

Pixabay

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Pixabay.com is a stunning library of free-to-use images for commercial and personal purposes. They do require registering for an account if you download full-sized images. There are some restrictions on how you may use their images but for most purposes, it works very well.

 

Creative Commons

“President Jimmy Carter with Pope John Paul II” by Marion Doss is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Creative Commons is loaded with current event and historical photos and has a handy search tool to help you find images to use for commercial purposes. Be careful that you read image licenses carefully because not all Creative Commons images are free for use.

 

Freepik

 

Food photo created by azerbaijan_stockers – www.freepik.com

Freepik has an impressive collection of stock photos, templates, and mockups that are free for use with proper attribution. They have an extended collection of images available for paid licensing on a subscription basis. Like Pixabay, there are restrictions on exactly what ways their images can be used so be certain to read their licensing agreement.