I hate photos of small towns with empty streets. I found this great photo with people in downtown St. Albans, Vermont, on Pixabay.
Between writing blog posts, sharing on social media, and creating graphics for my business, I’m always using photos. As much as possible, I use my own photos or ones that rural friends have shared with me with permission to re-use them. But I still find places I need a photo that I don’t have in my collection. You probably run into the same issues in your business, so high time to update our series* on where to find good photos you can use.
Three of my favorite current sites for photos you can use for personal or business needs that don’t cost anything are:
- Pixabay – makes it easy to see image sizes and what the file size will be before you download
- Pexels – makes it easy to download them by opening the image in a new window/tab for you to save
- Unsplash – makes it copy-and-paste simple to give a credit to the photographer, even though it isn’t required
Other sites worth mentioning help with special applications:
- MockupWorld has some free stock photos, but also has mockups you can edit, like photos of billboards, smartphones, and book covers you can customize with your graphic, making it look like your product is out there in the real world
- GetColorStock isn’t free, but has high quality photos of people of color in useful collections like family, technology, healthy lifestyles and more
- Update: I’ve just found PicNoi, which has a smaller collection of photos of people of color, at no charge
*Here are the previous articles in our photo resource series:
- What are the restrictions on using photos you find online?
- How to use old photos in tourism
- More photos for your tourism promotions: Wikimedia Commons
- Finding photos to use online: Flickr Creative Commons
- The US government has tourism photos for you
- and a reminder: If you don’t do this one thing, you might as well delete all photos from your site
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Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
A friend just pointed me to a few more sources of diverse photos in this post at Lifehacker post: Where to Find More Diverse Stock Photos