While nearly everyone has a smartphone these days that has a built in camera, not everyone is a photographer. Sure, you can take pictures, and you probably take plenty of them, but that doesn’t mean you’re happy enough with them to share them on your blog or website.
Anyone that has a blog, or a website, knows that have some nice colorful photos can really catch people’s attention. That means that having photos is important, but you want to make sure they are great photos that people actually want to look at.
For some things you may need to take your own pictures, but with so much access through the internet to billions of free and cheap stock photos. why bother. You just need to know how and where to look for some great photos that someone else already took.
How To Look For Photos Online
While it’s simple to just type in some search words in your preferred search bar there is no guarantee that the photos you find are free for you to use. Using a photo you don’t have permission to use can get you into a lot of trouble.
When you do your search you want to look for creative commons photos. These are photos that people are happy to let others use, usually all they ask for is photo credit and possibly a link back to the original photo. Most stock photo sites have a place for creative commons photos.
If you are using the photo in order to sell something you may also want to make sure that is OK with the photos owner. Even creative commons photos can be for non-commercial use only.
Paid Photos Online
If you want photos to use for commercial uses, such as your business website, you’ll probably want to look into finding a place with cheap stock photos. According to Bigstock, a provider of affordable stock photos, it’s as easy as knowing your search terms when it comes to looking for the perfect stock photos for your project.
You may or may not be able to edit the photos you get. Maybe you want to add a text piece directly on the photo, you’ll have to look at the rights attached to that photo. Maybe you want to change how sharp the image is. Whether you can do it or not all depends on the rights the owner has set forth and you should be able to find that info where you purchased the photo.
Depending on how many photos you need, and how often you need them, buying stock photos can often be a far cheaper alternative to buying a professional SLR camera in order to get the quality of pictures that you could just be purchasing from another photographer.