It’s tough to tell which images you can use as a writer and which you can’t. Copyright laws make it difficult for many web writers to find images to place with their content, without paying for them.
These sites offer free images:
Freepixels has thousands of images available for download for free. The license agreement is fairly lengthy, but fully explains what expected for the use of each photograph. There tends to be a lot of advertising on this site, especially for other photography sites that charge for the use of their photos.
This site has thousands of images available for use in practically way possible. The photos are royalty free, and can be downloaded for use on blogs, websites, flyers, catalogs, and more. This site is also linked to istockphoto.com, so there are a few advertisements and even search results that come from that site, which you must pay for. Still, Stock.xchng has a lot of great photos for free.
Combining many free photo websites, this site searches multiple places for photos. Each photo may have a different license agreement with it. Some have required attribution, and others have different stipulations. Make sure you follow the agreement for each free photo you use.
MorgueFile does a nice job of spelling out its user agreement in simple language, without searching through a huge license agreement. What’s different about this site is the ability to filter results by size, date, category, rating, color and even geotag.
Besides being able to search for images on shutterstock.com, it is also divided into categories like animals, graphics, industrial, objects, seasonal and textures.
Image*after definitely has a different look that the sites mentioned above. A lot of the photos tend to be taken by amateurs and have a non-professional look, but with some digging you can find some good-quality photographs to pair with your writing.
Some other sites to consider:
Make sure that whatever site you’re on, you read the license agreement and follow its instructions. Some photos require attribution, some require none at all. There are many people out there who don’t take pictures for money, but instead want to see their work shared around the world. Browse these sites and see what you can find that will work for you, and do it for free!
~Natalie
