This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click through and purchase something using my links, I receive a small commission. You can click here to read my disclosure policy ? Thank you!
One of the biggest challenges when I was trying to get on my feet as a serious blogger was finding good, quality images for my blog posts. In case you haven’t realized it yet, images on your site are very important. Not only can they connect your post to the photo, but they’re also appealing to look at, break up text, and (my favorite) can drive tons of traffic to your blog through Pinterest (if you do it right).
Creating the perfect Pinterest image is a post for another day, but you don’t have to settle for camera phone images for your blog posts. If you’re not a good photographer, or if your blog doesn’t lend itself to taking photos (like personal finance blogs… should every photo be a picture of money? ;)), you still should include images your blog!
Here are three awesome resources for finding images for your blog. And yes, even if your blog doesn’t seem like it needs images, try to incorporate images every once in a while. You don’t have to be Martha Stewart, creating the perfect blog image, but I guarantee you’ll get more participation and possibly see your bounce rate decrease if you include images here and there around your blog.
Eclectic Photos: Death to the Stock Photo
Death to the Stock Photo is one of my favorite places to get photos. Unfortunately, DSP doesn’t come out nearly as often as I would like! 🙂 DPS was created by two photographers who wanted to give creative people like me and you better access to quality photos, without us having to spend tons of money.
DPS sounds out around 7-10 images every month, and they are free. They’re very good quality photos, and they can be anything from photos of cameras (meta), trees, mountains, people, objects… almost anything appropriate you can imagine, DPS has probably done it.
If you want, you can purchase access to DPS’ premium pack of photos, which will give you 400+ photos to choose from. If you really love DPS’ photos and want to support them, it’s a great resource! However, I’ve so far been really happy with the monthly free photos, and you can make do with them as well to save some money.
Photos, Photos Everywhere: Unsplash
My also-favorite place to get free photos is Unsplash, and I love them so, so much. With Unsplash, you get 10 free high resolution photos every ten days. You’ll get so many quality photos from Unsplash, your stock photo folder will quickly start to fill up!
Pro tip: if you see a couple photos you’d like to use for future (or past) blog posts, save the image from Unsplash with the name of your blog title. This will make it easier for you to go back and quickly grab the right image.
With Unsplash, you can alter the photos in anyway without giving credit. You can, of course, give credit if you want to, but it’s not required. Feel free to manipulate (or not) the photo to your blog’s content!
When You Can’t Find That Specific Thing: Morguefile
For the longest time I avoided Morguefile because the name creeped me out. I thought it was going to be a website with outdated photos, or dead bodies or something. Don’t be creepy like me – Morguefile is actually awesome when used correctly! Morguefile is just like Unsplash, where you can use the photos/images for free with no attribution.
I love Morguefile for finding those particular images I can’t find elsewhere. For example, I was looking everywhere for a good Valentine’s Day photo for my frugal date ideas post, but I couldn’t find one with Unsplash or DPS. With Morguefile, just go to the website, type in something like “valentine’s” or “love” or “candy hearts”, and usually what you’re looking for will pop up. Voila! A cute image or photo to use for your blog post.
I say “usually will pop up” because I’ve found with Morguefile that you have to be very generic in your terms. Don’t get too specific with what you’re looking for, otherwise Morguefile won’t be able to retrieve anything. If you want to write a post about pets, type in “dog” or “labrador” but don’t type in “big hairy Mastiff with drool hanging out of its mouth.” That’s too specific.
Note: I would be remiss to mention that Canva, the super awesome photo-editing site that a lot of bloggers use, now also has free images for you to use! Simply search for “free images”, or click to read this post by Canva for more information on using their free photos!
There you have it! Three free photo and image resources for you to use on your own blog. A note on no-attribution photos (which all of these are): Using no-attribution photos comes in handy when you’ve saved a bunch of photos to your stock photo or images folder and don’t know where you got them. If you’re more organized than I am, definitely search out photos that require attribution if you really like them – just make sure you give credit where credit is due!
Bonus! I decided to write a post on free photo resources for bloggers mostly because it was really hard for me to find images at the beginning, so I hope I’m making it a little easier for all the new bloggers out there. However, I also read about these hilarious free stock photos from the Vince Vaughn comedy Unfinished Business, and I just had to share them with you. Click here and here to get access to the images (which you need to credit, but just use those links), if you want to put random photos of Dave Franco and Vince Vaughn in your blog 😉
The poses are idiotic and terrible yet hilariously totally reminiscent of places I’ve worked… the same faces… poses… everything. Check it out for yourself below and at the links above!
What free photo or image resources have you used for your blog? Do you usually try to use attribution-only photos, or do you search out any and all images that will work for you?
One of my favourite sites for stock images is http://www.stockpholio.net/, I also use Flickr a lot but I only select the ones that are listed as creative commons. I make sure to credit photographers always.
Barry, I hadn’t heard of that site until now! Thank you so much for sharing! I like Flickr a lot as well, they’re somewhat like Morguefile.
Thanks for the great suggestions! When your first starting out you don’t always have the extra money to purchase photos from different places. I personally like to use Pixabay they have hundreds of stock photos for free and your not limited to the number of photos you use.
That’s so true, Tennille! Oh, I hadn’t heard of Pixabay – thanks for sharing that resource!
I love Morguefile – whenever I’m designing Pinterest worthy images for other folks websites, that’s where I wind up pulling the images from. They have so many!
They do have so many, it’s awesome! You can always find something there in a pinch 🙂