5 Sites To Source Beautiful Stock Images and Videos For Your Blog
Visual intelligence is always important when it comes to your blog. Having the right photos and videos can enhance your blog’s content and story. While it’s true that high quality, professional photos gives you a cutting edge in visual representation, sometimes it’s not always feasible to hire a professional photographer. Especially, if you’re starting out as a blogger. Reasons can be due to a tight budget, finding the right photographer to get the type of aesthetic you want, or copyright issues.
But what if I told it’s possible to source beautiful photos and videos without having make an appointment with a photographer, wait for edits, or having to break your budget?
You can, by using online stock imagery.
What Is Stock Imagery?
Stock imagery are collections of high quality photos and videos, typically created by freelance photographers or videographers, that are readily available for others to use. This imagery can be used in digital and hardcopy designs such as blogs, websites, and other publications. Stock images and videos offers a wide variety of images with no limits to genre or style.
There are many stock imagery sites that are royalty free based on their licensing policy. However, some require specific guidelines for free use or a fee to use.
*When using stock imagery, please be sure to always check the licensing policy, copyrights, and other laws for legal use to ensure that you are in compliance.
5 Sites To Source Beautiful Stock Imagery
While there are many great sites online that house beautiful stock imagery, I’ve listed five of my favorite sites to source beautiful stock imagery that you may find helpful for your next project or design.
Unsplash
Unsplash.com is my first go-to for free stock imagery. I find them to be the most artistic and aesthetically pleasing with an expansive variety of cutting edge photos and videos. You can search and save images and videos by artist, color, and keywords. You can also make create and organize collections of your own to share with others on the site.
Pexels
Pexels.com is a solid second for free stock imagery. They offer a great variety of design mock-ups and beautiful, unique photos and videos. I typically use this site to curate inspiration/mood boards for color theme ideas, mock-ups for branding ideas, and for showcasing my clients’ brand.
Kaboom Pics
Kaboompics.com is a newly found, hidden gem I happen to discover and is quickly gaining popularity. This stock imagery site is fairly new and focuses on stock photos only. However, their photos are magnificent. Their photo collections are well organized and gives a color palette breakdown with color hex codes from each photo which is helpful for color branding.
Moyo Studio
Moyo-studio.com is a personal favorite of mine. While they do not offer free stock photos, their premium, thoughtfully crafted photos and mock-ups are, luxe, sophisticated and modern that will definitely withstand the test of time. They offer color and theme specific bundles that are available for purchase.
Haute Stock
Hautestock.co is what I would consider to be the flagship of premium stock images and videos. They consistently craft beautiful imagery to make sure your brand looks great online and on social media. Their organized library of photos are extensive and you can search your photos by color and theme. While it does require a paid membership, you’re guaranteed access to high quality imagery with helpful tips on how to use their images for best visual results.
As stated earlier, there are many great sites that have beautiful stock images and videos available. These sites listed above are considered to be tried and true in delivering beautiful stock imagery for your blog posts. No matter which site you choose to use, the golden rule is to make sure the images and videos you are using brilliantly enhances and tells the story of your blog.
Are the any other sites that you’ve discovered that are your favorite when comes to sourcing beautiful stock imagery? Let me know in the comments below.
