When you’re creating a blog, you want to make it more enjoyable to look at by providing more than just your words. Adding images or videos is a great way to give your blog some visual stimulation and paint the picture behind the message a little clearer.
When deciding to add images to your blog, it can be challenging to know where to find pictures that will work with the message and also won’t affect the reader’s ability to load the page. It’s a great idea to lessen the focus on your words and opinions and add a little more focus to the imagery of your blog in order to help with the meaning behind the message, give some visual context and to break up your text. Here is a look at how to make your blog more aesthetically pleasing with free images from these sources.
Unsplash
Unsplash is a source that features free images and it’s really easy to use. If you create a free account, you can have access to several download options. Most people opt for a paid membership because the 10 photos for every 10 days is sometimes not enough.
For those that don’t post too often, the 10 photos may be perfect for you and they are hi-resolution making them clear on your blog and resizable. You get to keep the files to do what you want with them as long as you subscribe with your email address. Keep an eye out for new photos submitted by artists regularly.
Public Domain Pictures
Another free image source is Public Domain Pictures, a public domain that offers free images to anyone. The rules are that you’ll have to look for ones that offer a release with a licensing requirement, which means you’ll have to carefully check to see what the rules are on each image. It may sound tedious but it’s pretty simple once you get going. They have unique images submitted by creative professionals and photographers that want a place to sell their work. The artists are vetted before they get to submit their work too.
Pixabay
One of the best routes you could go is choosing Pixabay for your blog’s images. It’s a really flexible image source that doesn’t put any rules behind the images that you want. There are no attribution requirements and it’s simple by just searching on the homepage before you even log in. check out photos, illustrations and vector images that can be downloaded in different image sizes to make sure it’s clear and high quality for your blog.
Compfight
Another site with a plethora of beautiful free photos is Compfight. It’s different than Pixaby and Unsplash in that is requires you to filter through the license types in order to stay legally compliant. You’ll have to look to see which ones include originals, what the license types are and what other licensing elements are involved. Learn about Creative Commons to stay legal in the creative world so that you can legally use photos from this site and Public Domain Pictures. There may be some potential costs upfront so keep an eye out as you download images.
Dreams Time
Dreams Time is a great option for those needing a large variety of images and image types for free. You can browse as carefully as you want from a keyword to a category or an image type. You can use the free portion or the paid options depending on your needs. The paid subscribers get more options to include stock photography, web design graphics, vectors and more. Try their promotion in which you can download five or ten images for free before paying for a paid subscription.
Other popular sources include:
- Death to the Stock Photo
- Morgue File
- Creative Commons
- Photo Pin
- Free Digital Photos
- Little Visuals
- Alegri Photos
- And much more!
If you’re looking for the best possible images, consider these sites for free images for your blog to give visual context behind the message.