Product Photography

The Best Small Business Stock Photography Resource Guide | Sorted by Style & Subject

If you’re crafting a blog, updating your website, or designing a beautiful email campaign, killer images are necessary. Images break up text and make information easy to digest, in addition to adding a stunning visual compliment to your design. But alas, finding high quality, relevant images can be anything from a pain in the butt to a straight up barrier to your project. Thankfully, the world of stock photography exists just a few clicks away.

Before we dive in to the goodies (a whopping list of resources and a few helpful tips), here’s some handy jump links that will take you right to the section you’re interested in:

1. Premium Stock Photography Resources
2. Free Stock Photography Resources
3. Stock by Subject Matter/Style
4. Understanding Stock Photography
5. Picking The Right License

Paid Stock Photography Sources

If you would rather just dish out a little cash for “premium” photos rather than spend time looking around the web for something free that fits what you’re looking for, there several options. Here are a few of our favorites paid stock resources:

• Shutterstock. Basic Plan including 5 images with Standard License, $49. Tons of search filters and types of files, including vectors. *TIP* Check out their Curated Collections.
• iStock. 3 asset credits with Standard License, $33. Flexible pricing for royalty free images, videos, and vectors
• Adobe Stock. Monthly plan with 3 assets per month, $29.99 and no annual committment. Pairs perfectly with Adobe Creative Suite for testing images before purchase
• Alamy. Pricing is per image with a range of $20 to $200 for a variety of usage rights. Over 90 million assets to choose from!
• SC Stockshop. Pricing is per image with a range of $49 to $247 for collections. Coordinates with your branding using a color search feature
• DepositPhotos – Three plans available including a Flexible Plan which includes 30 images a month and rollover credits, $29. Also offers vectors and videos.
• YayImages – Five pricing plans ranging from $0.10 a photo to $10 a photo.
• Social Squares –  Beautiful minimalistic images specifically cropped for Instagram to help you build a follow-worthy feed of fresh, beautiful visual content. Pricing per image is $15, with a buy 2 images get 1 free discount.
• Moyo Studio – Minimalist inspired aesthetic, join their mailing list for free photos!

Courtesy of Social Squares

FREE Stock Photography Sources

There are plenty of places to get free stock photography, and there are high quality images that are free to use commercially too. It just requires a little more effort to find them. The most important thing is knowing where to look. Trust us, you do not want to hunt blindly around the internet to find images—your kids will be graduating college before you get what you’re looking for. Instead, focus your search efforts on these Fuze Approved sources:

• Unsplash. The tagline says it all: “Free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos.”
• PixaBay A beautifully curated site with stunning images.
• This extended list by Dustin Sonos. Images curated by a designer
• Flickr. There’s a search option that allows you to select for commercial use images. Even better, images with a Creative Commons 0 license are “all rights granted,” so you can use them however you want.
• Kaboom Pics. Wide range of photos free for commercial or personal use.
• Pic Jumbo. You can even download the entire library of free images!
• Gratisography. Library of stock free of copyright restrictions
  
• RawPixel . Even includes PSD mock-ups and vectors!
• Burst. Shopify’s free resource for a wide range of stock images.
• StockVault. Free images, textures, and even illustrations
• ISO Republic Thousands of high resolution photos on a variety of topics
• LibreStock A great resource that scans and indexes the best free stocks photos on the internet.
• Pexels – Beautiful free photos with a great search function
• Ivory Mix – Get 550+ free photos, plus weekly tips, & monthly updates! Simply sign up for the newsletter to be a member.
• Michelle Styled Stock Photos –  Enter your email for a free bundle.
• Wunderstock is a growing site with 3+ million free-to-use images. They can extend any search to Flickr which can be very useful for academic and niche topics.

Free Stock Photos By Subject Matter & Style

Looking for a specific type of photo for your next project? We’ve done a little bit of the legwork for you and directly linked some sites with categories from food to space and more. Most of these images are free for commercial use. Just be sure to check the site for specific licensing requirements, if any:

Food

• Fancy Crave – Some legitimately mouth-watering food and drink photos here
• Foodies Feed – Photographs just for the food lovers! Even includes some digital goodies like templates and icons
• Pexels – Tons of flatlay and plated food options
• Wellness Stock Shop – The world’s most soulful stock photos to grow wellness brands.
• Wunderstock – A great variety free editorial food shots.

Travel/Nature/Space

• Travel Coffee Book – Curated collection of stunning travel, nature photos
• Picography – A variety of scenic images by photographer and avid traveler, Dave Meier. He has a premium option too!
• PeekSpace – An out-of-this-world collection of NASA’s images from space
• BucketListly – You can select the region of the world you want photos of.

Technology/Business

• SplitShire – 12 Pages of technology and business related images
• Startup Stock Photos – Perfect for small businesses and startups
• RawPixel – Great variety of styles here

People

• StockSnap – Huge selection of images with a wide variety of styles
• SplitShire – A wide variety of people-centric images from editorial to lifestyle and fashion
• Gratisography – Beautiful, curated collection of whimsical and bright people photography

Pets

• AnimalHaus – Royalty-free, super affordable, and offers a variety of pet related photographs
• Wunderstock  – Free editorial-style photos of pets and animals.

Negative Space

• NegativeSpace – Tons of images perfect for pairing with copy
• Jay Mantri – Plenty of professional, CC0 images that are great for adding text
• Photype.co – This site allows you to preview your crop and text on free photos from Pexels.
• Magdeleine – Some really gorgeous options with negative space
• Unsplash – Over 600 images curated for beautiful typography

Black & White/Vintage

• New Old Stock Travel- Amazing collection of vintage, public domain images
• Unsplash – Almost 400 black & white images in a variety of styles
• Vintage Stock Photos – Tons of categories such as Road Trip, Suburban Life, and Advertising

Feminine & Pretty

• Kate Max Stock – Thousands of modern, feminine, styled stock
• PixiStock – Get access to over 1500 stock photos along with hundreds of Instagram images and Canva templates.
• Stock Brand Library – Airy photography with bright color pops.
• SC Stockshop – Coordinates with your branding using a color search feature
• Styled Stock Society – Memberships start at $23 / month, for unlimited access to over 1,200 images, organized by collection.
• Michelle Buchanan Styled Stock – Professional and versatile styled stock photography.
• Stock Love Studio – Mock-ups focused on print products like place cards, greeting cards, and easels.
• Marigold Stock Photo – Styled photos by collection.
• Styled Stock Society  – Pay once, lifetime access for $350.
• Wander and Rose – Specializes in high end Stock Photos, mockups and all things floral.
• Sourced Co. –  Stock Imagery for wedding professionals and publications

Curated Minimalism

• Moyo Studio-Styled stock photos created with the style and design conscious entrepreneur and business owner in mind. Intentionally crafted with a minimalist inspired aesthetic.
• Haute Stock Co. – A curated collection of gorgeous styled stock photos, created specifically for women entrepreneurs, at your fingertips with a quarterly or annual membership.
• Jana Bishop – Collections of airy beautiful office and home stock photos

Understanding Stock Photography

Stock photography consists of photo libraries that are created with the intention to be re-used in commercial projects (as opposed to hiring a photographer to create images just for you). That said, it doesn’t mean they’re just free to use. Stock photography can generally be lumped into two categories: free  and paid. Some content creators allow their work to be used commercially (for profit) or for personal use for free, but you need to read the license closely to determine how you’re allowed to use the image. Paid content will require you to purchase a license for usage rights, and that can get a little confusing.

Picking The Right License for Usage Rights

Acquiring the rights to use an image you want to use is important, both so that you’re not infringing on someone’s intellectual property rights, and so that you’re not paying for usage rights that you don’t need. Licenses vary depending on the way or extent to which you plan on using that image. There are a lot of specifics if you really want to get into it, but image licenses tend to differentiate along these general lines:

• Commercial use. Are you going to be using the image to make money in any way? If so, you’ll want an image that covers commercial use.
• Modification. Will you be making any changes to the image itself (including cropping)? If so, you’ll want a license that allows for modification.
• Attribution. When it comes to places like Creative Commons and Flickr (more on these later), you’ll really want to pay attention to the attribution requirements. Some photographers will require that any re-use of their images come with an attribution, while others won’t.

We can’t emphasize it enough. Do. Your. Research. to determine your responsibilities before you proceed.

[Pro Tip: Creative Commons Zero, or CC0, licensed items have zero restrictions, meaning they are free for commercial or personal use however you so choose.]

New stock sources are popping up everyday. What’s your favorite source for free stock photos or best-investment paid services? Share with the community in a comment below!

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