If you’re looking for good cheap (and/or free) stock photos for your blog there is a helpful list over at Presentation Zen titled Where can you find good images?
found via LifeHacker
About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I have created two lists in my blog, one with about 70 sites that offer free stock photos free stock photos list
and a smaller list with cheap stock photo sites linky
I’ve found Eldis’es development related photosite links usefull. Scroll down to find the free ones: http://www.eldis.org/tales/picturingit.htm
Forgive me for being a bit biased on the subject, but I’ve seen this “list of free photo sites” make the rounds in the last few days. From the sites that I’ve seen from these lists, 85% or more of the images on the free sites are just plain bad pictures. Bad lighting, bad composition, flat, boring, and plain old Forgetable was the impression most of these photos left me with. Based on that, I wonder how business blogs and websites would spend so much time, energy, and resources building a professional web presence, and then be so attracted to decorating their site with bad photos – just because they’re free. It’s like asking if anyone would take Darren and Problogger seriously if it was decked out with cheesy neon icon bells & whistles, and adds with big dancing rainbows and bird chirping sounds. The long and short is that image counts, and unprofessional and thouroughly forgettable photos make a business site look the same; unprofessional and forgettable. Agree or disagree?
[…] I’ve posted the following reply over at Problogger.net after seeing a recent series of posts making the blog rounds for a list of places where people can get free photos. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to bother reposting the list. […]
there is always google too : http://www.google.ca/search?q=free+stock+photos :D
Gary’s point is I think a very strong one. If you want to make your blog look professional, amateurish images are among the last thing you want. (The very last thing is cheesy music,but that’s another story.)
There are lots of very good images freely available. For example, there’s some great stuff at Flickr under Creative Commons.
But if you really are a ProBlogger, and the right image is available at a (reasonable) cost, it would make sense to invest to get your blog just right.
[…] Good photo sources for your blog, via Blogspotting, who thanks ProBlogger: […]
[…] Finding free quality images is hard and time consuming job. Fortunately, Presentation Zen, has compiled a set of links to free quality images. You may find the link list at free good quality images note: found from problogger […]
Another good site for free stock photos is http://www.freepixels.com
Thanks for sharing the Zen.
I couldn’t agree more. Some free pictures might actually be more expense than paying for stock images. If a free picture is bad enough it will distract from your article, maybe even send away people, resulting in a net loss!
At $1-5/image (per article), it’s really not that much for a professional blogger. I’d rather spend that money on higher quality pictures because it will enhance my blog posts. I even believe that I’ll get more value from high quality pictures than from advertising.
I usually use sxc.hu though. not really a spender. =P