I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, “A picture’s worth a thousand words.”A well-chosen photo can prime your audience for what they should expect from your content and that cover photo, blog image, or website background isoften all you’ll have at a first impression with your targeted audience.It’s vital that you choose something eye-catching, topic appropriate, and most importantly – copyright free.

“Psychologically, consumers love imagery, and seeing visually appealing things creates positive emotions. Most people — between 65 and 85 percent — also describe themselves as ‘visual learners,’ forming meaning and organizing thoughts based on what they see more so than what they read.”

Most images have copyright restrictions, even if they’re floating around on the web, and that’s respectable; Credit should go where credit is due. The only problem is that most images that have a copyright in place are only available for the artist’s reproduction and exclusive use and possibly for use by a third party for a fee.

To help you avoid paying any fees for stock photography or accidentally using protected images we’ve put together a list of 30+ sources that you can peruse to find the right photos to make your theme, blog, and websites really stand out.

These free sources often only require you to provide an attribution.

  1. Unsplash
  2. Jaymantri
  3. Startup Stock Photos
  4. Stokpic
  5. HiveStock
  6. Freerange Stock
  7. Free Photos Bank
  8. IM Free
  9. SplitShire
  10. Pikwizard
  11. Death to The Stock Photo
  12. Photogen
  13. Kave Wall
  14. FreeFoto
  15. Creativity103
  16. Photober
  17. Stockvault
  18. Pixabay
  19. Picography
  20. Albumarium
  21. Morguefile
  22. Can We Image
  23. Lorem Pixel
  24. Unprofound
  25. iStock
  26. Jeyjoo Gallery
  27. Superfamous
  28. Foter
  29. FreePixels
  30. Free public domain images

Alternatively, you could also use Google’s search tools to search for images based on their usage rights. These images do however carry some risk of having a copyright in place if they’ve been posted by a third party without the expressed permission of the original owner so be sure to double check the usage rights by either reaching out to the owner or by double checking the website to make sure that there is a disclaimer or some indication that the photos are free use without any copyright restrictions.

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