It takes forever to find excellent sites to download free photos for blogs and social media posts. As a result, the Internet is flooded with ugly imagery. I leave a website immediately if I see poor photography. The same thing with social media.
Beautiful and authentic photography can improve your brand and visual communication. Think of brands like Nike, Apple, and National Geographic. All these brands use stunning imagery to convey their messages with charming imagery.
Visually Wired Creatures
Humans are visually wired beings and 90% of the information our brain receives is visual. Many studies show that visual content is way better than text and explains why our brain craves images.
- People retain 80% of what they see and only 20% of what they read.
- Social media users are 40% more likely to share visual content than other types of content.
- 65% of people are visual learners.
- Content with visuals gets 94% more total views.
- Almost 50% of your brain is involved in visual processing.
- 70% of all your sensory receptors are in your eyes.
- We can get the sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second.
- 67% of the audience was persuaded by the verbal presentation that had accompanying visuals.
Use high-quality photos for blogs and social media posts to make a strong first impression, get more views and create a memorable emotional connection.
“Do Whatever You Want” License
All the photo providers compiled in this list offer free photos for personal and commercial purposes. Some of the providers indicated that their photos are under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license while others have variations of other similar licenses.
You can download, copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer.
Most of the providers don’t allow you to sell and redistribute original photos or claim them to be yours.
Important: double-check the license of the individual photo you want to use to ensure it is free and doesn’t require attribution. You’re responsible for how you use the photos. Be respectful to registered trademarks and models.
Here are excellent websites you can use to download free photos for blogs and social media posts.
Moose
Moose offers more than 200,000 free and premium images. Free ones always come first in search results and are marked with a small yellow box labeled free.
Rawpixel
Rawpixel is smashing stereotypes to create design resources that reflect today’s society as it really is. To achieve this, they’re obsessed with exploring new ways to express concepts with creativity and authenticity.
Pixbuster
Pixbuster was founded by Finnish photographer and graphic designer Juha Tuomi. All content is created by Juha and is free to use.
From Pixbuster, you can find thousands of photos with a Nordic feel, ready-to-use and editable Canva templates, and new add-ons like desktop wallpapers and AI-generated images. New content is added monthly.
Snapwire Snaps
Snapwire Snaps shares 7 free beautiful photos every 7 days from 200,000 of the world’s most talented photographers.
Pixabay
Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing royalty free images and videos. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist.
Libreshot
Libreshot provides images for your websites and blogs. You can download and use photos even in your commercial projects, no attribution required.
SpaceX Photos
SpaceX Photos is an exclusive collection of promotional SpaceX stock photography available for free on Flickr.
Focus Fitness
Focus Fitness provides free high-quality stock images with a focus on fitness, weight loss, and food.
The Pic Pac
The Pic Pac shares authentic photo packs with “do whatever you want” license. All packs are “pay what you want” meaning you can get them for free or support the project by donating any amount of your choice.
Epicantus
Epicantus was created by Daria, a lean startup coach and UX designer to empower people to create landing pages, prototypes, collect feedback and test various business ideas.
Streetwill
Streetwill is a growing collection of free vintage photos to use any way you want.
FreeJPG
FreeJPG offers over 11,000 free high-quality free stock photos for commercial and editorial use.
Pattern Pictures
Pattern Pictures is a collection of free texture background photos you can use for personal and commercial purposes.
Pik Wizard
Pik Wizard is a growing collection of 100,000 completely free stock photos for all your creative needs.
Free Nature Stock
Free Nature Stock was created by Adrian Pelletier. It’s an ever-growing collection of high-quality royalty-free nature stock photos.
Barn Images
Barn Images was created by Igor Trepeshchenok and Roman Drits, two photographers from Latvia. You can find only quality photography that’s fresh, with nothing that duplicates the stock photography you’ll generally find elsewhere.
Fancycrave
Fancycrave fights cheesy stock photos by providing emotionally driven images that tell a story. Every day they hand pick and share two free authentic photos from real people.
Skitterphoto
Skitterphoto is a place to find, show and share public domain photos. You may download and edit photos and even use them commercially.
Burst
Burst is a free stock photo site that is powered by Shopify. All the photos on their platform are offered under the CC0 license, which means you’re welcome to use the photos for any purpose.
Pexels
Pexels gives you a batch of fresh royalty-free photos every day. The site adds 100 new high-definition photos daily.
Scatter Jar
Scatter Jar offers delicious free food photographs for creatives. All photographs published on the Scatter Jar website are available, free of charge, for both personal and commercial use.
Startup Stock Photos
Startup Stock Photos started out as a personal project and grew into a source of free images for bloggers, designers, publishers and all types of creatives.
Jay Mantri
Jay Mantri gives away free photos you can use in your projects, social media, and blogs. Tweak it and use it any way you like.
Travel Coffee Book
Travel Coffee Book is another source for free travel photos that are simply amazing. You can subscribe and receive updates or download straight from the site.
Unsplash
Unsplash is one of the biggest and my favorite free high-resolution images contributed by photographers from around the world. The site is updated daily with tons of new photos.
Jeshoots
Jeshoots was created by Czech designer Jan Vasek in 2014 to help other web designers. He is one of the best Czech web designers on Behance.
Picography
Picography has more than 300,000 images to choose from and 90 percent are free to download. Just buy them some coffee to thank them.
Gratisography
Gratisography distributes free high-resolution images taken by Ryan McGuire. Every week the author adds new pictures.
Picjumbo
Another website founded by a designer and photographer for fellow creatives. Picjumbo adds more than 30 new images every month. According to the website, it has more than 5 million downloads since the beginning.
Public Domain Archive
Public Domain Archive shares free breathtaking stock photos for all types of projects. At the time of writing, the images were downloaded more than 385,000 times.
Cupcake
Jonas Wimmerström created Cupcake to distribute free images that you can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking for permission.
Life of Pix
Life of Pix is a community for photographers who share their images and can be downloaded for free by others. New photos are added every week so there’s always a fresh batch of photos you can use.
ISO Republic
The ISO Republic was created by British designer and photographer Tom Eversley. The site has more than a thousand images that are free to download.
Stokpic
Ed Gregory started Stokpic because he knows how hard it is for designers to find free photos. In his own words, “not everyone has a hundred dollars” for these images.
Kaboompics
Kaboompics is created by Karolina, a graphic designer, and photographer who took most of the pictures. Big sites, like CNN and Forbes, have used some of the images from Kaboompics.
MMT
MMT is short for Moment and was launched in 2014. The site has new batches of images every week that you can use for free.
NegativeSpace
NegativeSpace provides free stock photos. You can download straight from the site or get it delivered to your email inbox.
Foodiesfeed
Foodiesfeed offers free high-quality food pictures perfect for food blogs. There is a premium version that gives you more access to pictures of exotic dishes, food, and fruits.
Alegri Photos
Alegri Photos is a good source of photos for architecture, interior design and travel blogs. In their collection, you’ll also find food, science and nature photos.
Conclusion
There you have it.
Over 30 excellent websites you can use to download free photos for blogs, presentations, social media updates and anything else that requires fine imagery.
The list includes only resources that provide free photos for personal and commercial purposes with no attribution required.
Save this post now to find it the next time you need authentic photos. Take a step further and share it with friends who always use ugly photos in their work.