9 Beautiful Stock Image Sites For Bloggers

Blogging has evolved so much over the years. The beauty of it is that it has become a space to communicate heart, opinion, create conversation, share, be yourself, meet others, and even turn into a full-time profession. More than simply writing and posting content, we, as bloggers, can often get ourselves in a pickle with, the imagery.

Ever visited a blog and were turned off by the words because of their cheesy stock images? Or maybe you’ve penned something incredible and always feel yourself being let down because you can’t seem to find the perfect image that captures the post.

We’ve all been there.

And chances are you’ve resorted to using those cheesy stock images, or breached copyright by using images straight from a Google or Pinterest search instead.

In recent times different curated sites have emerged and been created to help equip bloggers and website designers with more relatable and current imagery. Can anyone say, thank you!

For all you budding bloggers, here are some of these sites that we often use for TFW and recommend:

1 | Death to Stock – deathtothestockphoto.com

Death to the Stock Photo is a lifestyle image resource and adventure brand for dreamers and doers smashing the mold. And in our opinion, one of the best around when it comes to stock images. They did something fresh with the stock industry by producing high quality, creative, lifestyle images that are the perfect accompaniment to a site. They have two different options:

Option 1: Free Photos – subscribe via your email address and receive a themed pack of 10 new images every month.

Option 2: Premium – for a monthly subscription of $15 you not only receive access to their full library of images, but also receive a bonus pack each month that isn’t available to free subscribers.

DTTSP is subject to the Photograph End User License meaning that you can use the images how you desire, just don’t redistribute or claim their your own.

2 | Art and Anthem – artandanthem.com

Chances are you haven’t heard Art and Anthem, and that’s because it’s a new one created by the lovely Nadeena who’s a part of The Free Woman community. By email subscription you can receive 5 new lifestyle images straight to your inbox every month. The beauty of A&A is that the images are feminine, creative and incredibly fresh, captured for your creative use.

You’re free to use these images in blog and social media posts, graphics etc, as long as you don’t claim or redistribute them as if they’re your own.

3 | Unsplash – unsplash.com

Simply said, Unsplash is a site with “free (do whatever you want) high-resolution stock photos”. Every week, if you email subscribe, they send you 10 new featured photos to download. The great thing about Unsplash though is that they have a search button allowing you to easily look all their images for whatever style you’re after.

Images on Unsplash are licensed under Creative Commons Zero meaning you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free without asking permission or crediting the photographer or Unsplash. 

4 | Magdeleine – magdeleine.co

Magdeleine is a photo gallery for your inspiration. Everyday they hand-pick and feature high-resolution photos that you can download and use. The easy aspect of this site in terms of copyrighting restrictions is that each individual image notes what license it has.

5 | Lightstock – lightstock.com

Lightstock is a stock photo, vector and footage site geared toward faith-based bloggers. They have two different options:

Option 1: email subscription – a free image and vector graphic or video delivered to your email every week.

Option 2: Creating an account and accessing their stock library. For a fee (various set prices) you can search and download what you need.

6 | Pexels – pexels.com

Pexels release 10 new high-quality stock images everyday. The site is easy to navigate and and all images are under the Creative Commons Zero license meaning you can use them how you like, without attribution. There is great variety in the style and subject matter of the images, making it an excellent resource for many different types of sites.

7 | Negative Space – negativespace.co

Negative Space has a great variety of images with each week 20 new photos added to the site. All images are released under CCO, meaning that you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission or give attribution. The excellent thing about the Negative Space site is that their search function is sortable by category, copy space position and by colour – super handy!

8 | Split Shire – splitshire.com

Split Shire was created by Daniel Nanescu with a simple desire to help his fellow designers out and spread his photography around as well. All images are copyright-free and his database of excellent captures is only growing!

9 | The Pattern Library – thepatternlibrary.com

The Pattern Library is an ongoing project by Tim Holman and Claudio Guglieri. This project has a compilation of patterns generously shared by talented designers to be used freely in designs. While not images, these gorgeous patterns could become handy indeed in any creative projects (or a phone background!)

Now over to you – where do you source your stock images from? We’d love to know below!