You don’t need to have a team of professional photographers to have good-looking images for your publication. Thousands of high-quality images from both new and experienced photographers are available for free.
When we need to make a graphic for MTI (or anything really), we look to these sites for free high-quality photos:
1. stocksnap.io – A great selection of inspiring photography. We use this site when we need images that evoke emotion.
2. Pexels – Another great site, full of inspiring and professional photos. Pexels provides more office-themed photos than other free photo sites.
3. Magdeleine – A collection of hand picked images.
4. Bucketlistly – Great travel photos.
5. Kaboompics – Another diverse free-photo site, similar to pexels. High quality “hipster” images.
6. LifeofPix – You never know what you’ll find at life of pix. Great site to find pictures of buildings and places.
7. British Library – The British Library has been working hard to scan in all the images in their vast library. Perfect for detailed-vintage designs.
8. Picjumbo – A collection of diverse photos that might not be on another site. Check multiple sites if you have a specific photo/tone in mind.
We also subscribe to a couple organizations that send free photos directly to our inbox.
9. Death to Stock (monthly) – Every month a photographer submits a set of photographs for DTS to distribute. The themes vary from art projects, city tours, cooking, etc. Some of the photo packs we will never use, but you never know what may come.
10. snapwire (weekly) – Snapwire offers photographers-for-hire, but if you sign up for their newsletter, they will send you seven free photos ever week. You have to hurry to open the email though, because these seven are only available for that week.]
BONUS: Creative market – If you haven’t been to creativemarket.com, you need to check it out. Every week they provide six free design “goodies” that range from photos, website templates, fonts, vector illustrations, brushes…basically anything that you might need.
If you still haven’t found what you need, you can always purchase stock photos from sites like dreamstime, istock, and 123rf. These sites allow you to purchase and download high-quality graphics for a fee.
BONUS: After you find the perfect free photos, turn them into attention-grabbing graphics with Canva. It’s a powerful, free tool with only a few glitches (sometimes the font doesn’t turn out bold even though the editor says it’s bold). We use this when we need to create a good design and need to create it fast. Canva has a library of design templates, and you can replace their photos with a free one of your own. But their premium photos and icons are only $1 each, so it is still affordable if you fall in love with one of their premium designs.
**updated 5/18/17**
Related posts
Magazine Training International’s mission is to encourage, strengthen, and provide training and resources to Christian magazine publishers as they seek to build the church and reach their societies for Christ.
