Using stock and unique photography on your website is probably the most important aspect of making your website look and feel great. I always suggest you get your own photography done for the bulk of your static pages (about, services etc) and you can hire a local photographer for 3-4 hours at around $400. Make the most of this by making sure you have a clear shot and location list for the photographer to keep them busy. Get photography done your office, with your staff, at locations like art districts, coffee shops, against colorful walls, landmarks, and farmers markets. You should also make sure your shoot day is going to be a nice sunny day. Nothing worse than overcast and boorish skies. Just make sure when negotiating, that you own all photography and can use it for whatever purposes you see fit and get it in writing by them agreeing by email.
Be your own Photographer
Nearly everyone now has a camera on their phone, the only restriction is light. During the day you can take amazing photos, as long as your light source (sun) is behind you. Mobile Phones generally have a poor aperture, so it needs great light for best results. So, walking past flowers, vegetables, take a snap, sitting has coffee withy a computer and bag, take a photo, walking through a park, take a photo. You pretty much have no excuse not to take dozens of a day.
Google Image Search
Google Image Search is a great way to find free to use photography, but you have to know how. The video shows you the process, but it is as simple as this. Type in a topic, then go to Search Tools/Usage Rights/ Labeled for Reuse. Then you may also want to select the large size. All these images displayed are labeled for reuse, so have at it. Make sure you always save images to your desktop with your own subject as the title of the image. As an example the image of this post, I renamed freestockphotographyforyourwebsite.jpg, this way I get good SEO not only from my posts content but also from my image.
Storing Images
Having a great platform for storing and editing images is imperative. I have over 70,000 images and videos stored on Google Photos. There is an App for iPhone and Android, there is also a desktop version I use every single day. Your computer probably has a default images app, but these are poor cousins compared to Google Photos.
Free Stock Image Websites
These are my go to websites. Some you can pay a monthly or annual fee for access to all images, but generally, these provide many free great stock photos. I pay because I want to see this market surge as I have a deep distrust for most stock image websites because of their litigious nature and deceptive practices. So here are just a few.
Death to the Stock Photo
Gratisography
Life of Pix
Splitshire
Unsplash
2 Comments
Hi, very informative article.
Please also check out https://www.goodfreephotos.com for thousands of unique public domain photos, all high-resolution and free to use for any purpose.We specialize in photos by location as we document cities, national parks, state parks, national landmarks, and more. We update with 20+ photos each week. Appreciate it if you could add us to your list of sites.
Thank you I will!