If you have a good budget for images I would recommend hiring a photographer to take shots which are of your brand, for your brand.
However, if you can’t afford to do that, your next step is stock photography sites which offer royalty free or rights managed options. These sites often operate on a credit basis, meaning you purchase x amount of credits for £xx. Different sizes or formats may cost a different amount of credits. A popular one is iStockphoto.
If you’re a startup or a small business with a tight budget then you may find that you can’t splash out on the required credits. It can get pricey, quick! On the other hand, you may have never thought about stock photography because you simply use Google images to find images. You should definitely stop this as you probably don’t know the specific licenses for each image (using the Usage Rights search tool probably isn’t 100% accurate either) and you may get a letter or email demanding payment from a photographer or a company like Getty – I hear they love to sue.
So, what to do?! Well, here are some sites for free images to use commercially – but please don’t take my word for it, ALWAYS double check individual photo licenses.
My go-to site. There’s always a huge amount of fresh images added daily and the choice and quality is insane for £0. The site is easy on the eyes and you can easily search the site and create collections. You can also share the image on your networks to say thank you to the photographer.
Quite similar to unsplash, nice site, thank you and donation buttons, great choice of images and so on.
This site also offers illustrations, vector graphics, videos and more. It’s easy to search through with different variables you can search through. I am a little dubious of some of the content on here so double check.
Does what it says on the domain, with a search and collections feature.
Another plesant site to browse, you can search using terms or just narrow down the category.
A collection of his personal offerings for you to use.
This site thankfully now has a search bar, it used to be infinate scroll – you’d be there for hours.
I’m running out of things to say! It’s very similar to the others, search via search bar or categories.
The pictures here are shown in all their glory, taking up most of the visible space on the site.
Annoying advert at the top making the header huge but you gotta do what you gotta do!
You can get 20+ free images a month to your inbox
In the fitness industry? Well, here you go!
Sad mention: Little Visuals
A site put together by a 26 year old named Nic who sadly passed away late 2013 due to S.A.D.S (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome). If you’re between 14-25 you can be screened, sometimes it’s free (funded by a local CRY charity or memorial fund) other times it’s around £35. I’ve had it done, there’s lots of wires and it takes five minutes. Get it done! Find out more here.