Friday 15th July 2016The Best Free Stock Photo Sites
Ah, the stock photo. The very name probably conjures up hilariously bad images of business executives in meetings with clients or some other such nonsense, and rightly so. The classic stock photo is sort of a joke in most design circles by now, and even reached a point where actor Vince Vaughn and his co-stars for the movie Unfinished Business conducted a photo shoot sending up the traditional business settings you find in such photos.
Wednesday 13th May 2015New Stock Photo Resource Roundup But naturally, many artists and designers want more choice than the stock photos that are acceptable for use in Powerpoint presentations and annual reports. This has given rise to an entire new style of stock photography, and a number of websites have sprung up to cater to the need. Best of all, there are also a new crop of websites that offer these types of stock photos for free, no matter whether you're using them for a commercial project or just for fun. Having just found a few of these sites for our own design projects, we decided to share them with you so that you can avoid the bad stock photo curse. One of the best is 'Death to the Stock Photo', which clearly pulls no punches when it comes to their perception of the classic style of stock photo. A simple sign up for their email list will get you a monthly pack of stock photos delivered right to your inbox. If you like their style, they offer a premium option as well. Picjumbo also offers non-traditional stock photos, but they don't make you wait for monthly packages. Their free photos are also carefully organized, making it easier to find something appropriate, although their collection is still getting started and is nowhere near as large as more established stock photo sites. Finally, Unsplash rounds out the options with completely free stock photos that are released under the Creative Commons Zero license, which means they can be used for any project, private or commercial, with no attribution required whatsoever. Hopefully, you'll find something that will inspire and complete your latest project, or if you're a photographer, you might want to consider submitting your own work!
Using stock photos in your work can be a bit tricky. A well-chosen stock photo can complete a design or mockup perfectly, but choosing poorly can make your piece look like a bit of a joke. In an effort to maximise their earning potential, many photographers looking to make some extra cash will take endless streams of photos in the most forced and contrived settings in the hope that someone will come along one day and need a photo of an actor playing a stockbroker with a banana on his head, or something equally ludicrous. Even actor Vince Vaughn got in on the action as part of a marketing campaign for his latest movie, when they lampooned stock photo conventions using the actors from the movie.
