When you come to creating a new blog post, I’m sure that an essential aspect for you is to make your post as visually appealing as possible. Not everyone is an aspiring photographer or has access to a decent camera (or time/scenery/space for that matter!), and you may be thinking, where is the best place to find the best photos images for your blog.
During the design process of our themes, finding the right imagery for our theme demos plays a big part. I have my go-to sites where I source the best photos for our themes that are crystal clear, high in resolution and high in quality, and I want to share these sites with you so you can also have beautiful free photos for your blog.
Unsplash
Unsplash is by far the best source for high quality, high-resolution beautiful stock photos and is the most popular. This is where we get the majority of images for our theme demos. The amount of photos to choose from is vast, from many of the world’s top photographers. I think the selection of nature and landscape photos, in particular, is breathtaking. Unsplash recently introduced ‘Collections’ where they, and members of the site can create collections of photos for users to search through.
You can also search for specific keywords and then sort your search to show the latest, oldest and most popular photos. All of the photos on this site are free to use and can be used to “do whatever you want” with under the Creative Commons CC0 license. No permission needed!
PicJumbo
PicJumbo is an excellent site to source beautiful photos, covering different categories such as technology, people, nature and more. The website is straightforward to search for images, with a list of categories, tags and a search bar. You can also browse the latest free photos and the most popular photos. The great thing I find about PicJumbo is that they all have the same photography style as they are all taken by the talented Viktor Hanacek. There are now over 1000 photos that can be downloaded individually for free with the option to purchase all 1000+ photos in one go. You can also become a premium member with access to all the premium collections, plus monthly photo packs straight to your inbox.
Death to the Stock Photo
The ethos behind Death to the Stock Photo is to provide brands, bloggers and creatives with awesome free photography that, basically doesn’t look like the typical kind of stock photo, the hint is in the name! All you need to do is sign up free to receive a set of images to your email every month. You can download past photo packs from their site along with other design and writing resources.
If you want to become a premium member, you can sign up to receive photo packs every other week plus access to the 95+ existing photo packs. This comes in the form of either a Basic or Premium package, depending on what is best for your needs. What’s more, if you become a premium member, a percentage of the profit goes right back into funding the DTTSP community and funds creatives to take even more gorgeous photos!
Jay Mantri
This site is very much inspired by Unsplash but only showcases the stunning work of American photographer Jay Mantri. The photos on this site are entirely free and can be used any way you like, Jay’s words are “Make magic”! The images themselves are of high quality and seem to focus mainly on landscapes and textures. However, there isn’t a way to search the site for photos, so you need to scroll through the pages to find what you need.
StockSnap
This site is easy to use with a user-friendly interface designed to help you find the right kind of images that you need with the use of the search bar and tags. You can also sort the photos by date, number of views, number of downloads and what is trending. All of the images are completely free under the Creative Commons CC0 license, and you can do what you like with the photos without asking permission! You can also subscribe to the newsletter to receive images weekly straight to your inbox.
Raumrot
All of the photos on Raumrot are free for commercial and personal use under Creative Commons CC-BY license (you need to give credit when using these photos). Raumrot is not a site I use that often now, and it seems to have changed somewhat as now you can only download photo sets rather than individual photos however the option to download individual photos is possible from external sources (mostly Flickr). There is also the option to purchase additional photo packs that hold more images than standard packs and are more specific.
Foodies Feed
If you love food and love writing about food, then this site may be what you are after for finding the perfect food based imagery! This site breaks down the categories of photos into different types of food and cuisines, making it easier to find the right kind of image. You also get suggestions for other images that you may like when you go through to download a photo. Like some of the other sites I have mentioned, there is also the option to ‘go premium’ where there are different pricing plans to choose from to get additional photos, bundles and packs.
Im Free
This site is organised and categorises the photos into collections, which then break down into subcategories. There is also a keyword search bar to help find more specific photos. I feel that some of the photos on this site, in categories such as Occupations, Arts & Music and Sports, have a more documentary feel than some of the other sites I go to, which may be just the kind of image you need.
When you come to download your chosen photo, you will be directed to an external source to download the image, which is mostly Flickr. From here you can select which size you require and find out more about the license for the photo.
The black and white images and some of the photos in the People categories are particularly striking. Not only will you find free photos on this site but also free website templates, icons and more.
