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My Top Five Sites For Free Stock Photography

March 20, 2016 Rodlie Ortiz, D.Min.

We all need good stock photography don’t we? As a pastor, I’m in constant need of nice images for blog posts, Facebook event pages, social media posts, presentations—all kinds of things. Here are the five I like the most.

1. Pexels

Visit site

pexels

At the moment, I think this is my favorite. The pictures are all high quality and modern. No attribution is needed. No need to sign in to the site. Most of the pictures in my recent blog posts have been from here.

2. Unsplash

Visit site

This one is also excellent. The photos are minimalistic and really beautiful. Ok, I can’t help myself, check out an image from the site.

photo-1456428199391-a3b1cb5e93ab

Pretty nice, huh?

3. Flickr

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flickr

This is an oldie, but a goodie. Before I started using some of the sites above, I mainly used Flickr. They have lots of great images, but the nicest ones are copyrighted and can’t be downloaded. For ones you can use for free you have to search for Creative Commons images. Those usually aren’t as nice, and you have to give attribution.

4. Minimography

Visit site

minimography

This site does not yet have very many images, but they are all nice. It’s made by Lauren Mancke and Brian Gardener of Studio Press. The theme I use on this site is from Studio Press, by the way. Brian Gardener is also the creator of No Sidebar, a newsletter on minimalism, so you could see the connection.

5. Pixabay

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pixabay

This site has a lot of photos. For whatever reason I’m not as drawn to this site, though.

A few considerations

1. Canva is great for editing and producing social media images. If you don’t yet have an account with them, you need to sign up. They have professionally designed templates for posters, social media, and other uses, and it’s mostly free. If you use one of their premium templates you just have to pay $1.

2. Even though attribution is not necessary on most of the sites listed above, it’s often wise to do it anyway, so that you can remember where you got the image from. The last time I changed WordPress themes, it affected how images look on the site and I had to go back and fix things. Because I had attributed all the images, I was able to see the link, redownload the images, and add them in correctly.

So what about you? Do you use any of these sites? What would you add to this list? Let us know in our comments.

[image by Ben Blennerhasset]

Filed Under: blogging

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About Rodlie Ortiz, D.Min.

On the pastoral team at Pioneer Memorial Church on the campus of Andrews University. Tech geek.

Comments

  1. Marlonauta says

    March 23, 2016 at 11:39 am

    thanks for the resource list Rodlie!

    • Rodlie Ortiz says

      April 20, 2016 at 8:58 pm

      Oops! I’m just seeing this comment. You’re very welcome!

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