6 of my favourite stock photo resources
In my day job I do a lot of social media marketing, which means I need some good reserves of images on hand! The stock photo market has exploded in recent years and there are a ton of great options to choose from.
In no particular order, here are some of my recommended free and premium stock photo websites.
Envato Elements
Envato Elements is a paid subscription, but the price is super great and affordable even if you’re a casual or hobby blogger. What I love about it is that you get literally hundreds of thousands of resources available for download, from stock photos to icons to themes and even stock video.
As someone who works in marketing, it is more than worth the money in my opinion – I wouldn’t be without it!
Unsplash.com
If you’re on a tight budget and looking for free stock photos, you can’t go wrong with Unsplash. They have professional photographers make all kinds of contributions, so the quality is really good and you can find all kinds of different styles.
One thing I would say is to make sure you read their terms really carefully and check what’s in the photo you want to use, as photographs with people can potentially be problematic. You also want to follow the photography credit back to the original website to check that it’s a genuine source and you’re attributing the correct person.
Wikimedia
Sometimes you may need a photo of a famous person or well-known figure. For these types of images, and photos of famous landmarks and buildings, I like to use Wikimedia. The images are free to download, although you’ll want to check the licensing for the specific images you download to check the usage rights. More often than not you’ll need to credit and link to the author.
Adobe Stock
As a Photoshop user, I adore Adobe Stock. It started off pretty small, but it now has a huge range of options – photos on pretty much any topic you can think of. You may have some freebies included in your Adobe subscription, so it’s worth checking if you have any credit to download some.
If you don’t have an Adobe plan, the photos can work out pretty expensive, but sometimes it’s still worth it if it’s the exact photo you need.
Canva.com
Everyone’s heard of Canva, and they have a bunch of stock photos built-in. They’re not the easiest to browse, and they sell some companies’ logos as stock photos (which I personally am shocked by), but they do have some good ones in the pile. If you’re a Canva user it’s really quick and convenient to drop stock from them in to your designs, but I wouldn’t use them otherwise.
Storyblocks.com
Storyblocks is a classic subscription service that provides all kinds of resources beyond stock photos. Like Envato Elements, you get unlimited downloads for a reasonably priced subscription, so it’s ideal if you get through a ton of photos as I do.
My web host also has some great roundups of stock photo sites – in particular I love the culturally diverse ones and the LGBTQ+ ones.
What are your favourite stock photo resources? Let me know in the comments!