Hiring a photographer and graphic designer to create custom photos for your blog is extremely expensive. Turning to paid Stock Photo sites such as Shutterstock will also dig into your pockets. However, there are alternatives that offer free high quality stock photos, which are bound to help you drive more traffic and engagement to your blog.

The sites mentioned here offer all their photos for free, under the Creative Commons license. However, some of the images may be subject to other intellectual property rights including property rights and trademarks.

It is especially inadvisable to use images of people or private property. Overall, understanding the Copyright Fair Use laws will help you stay out of trouble when using free images on your WordPress blog.

Although it is not mandatory, it is best to credit the photographer once you use their photo. Who doesn’t love recognition for their hard work?

5 BEST SITES TO FIND FREE STOCK IMAGES FOR YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG

UNSPLASH

Unsplash is one of my personal favorites. It offers a vast pool of stunning images, which are regularly updated by its community of skilled photographers. Currently, close to 600k photos are available on this site. Although that number is lower than the images available on Pixabay (below), you will love the quality and diversity of the images.

A quick search will help you get the best photo for your blog post. You can also utilize curations, which are created by members, to locate an image that you like. There are curations by some popular brands such as Flipboard, Inc. Magazine and Squarespace.

PIXABAY

Thanks to its generous community, Pixabay is home to over 1.4 million royalty free stock photos and videos. Pixabay also offers thousands of illustrations and vector graphics, which are perfect for a wide variety of blogs.

You can easily navigate through the millions of images and videos by clicking on a specific category or by performing a refined search for a precise color, size or orientation.

PEXELS

Pexels is one of the most popular image sources for bloggers. I love its outstanding curation of beautiful high-resolution photos and videos.

The Pexels WordPress plugin is especially exciting for any WordPress blogger. It makes it easy to add photos to your blog posts. Additional Pexels tools include a Chrome extension, Mac & Windows app, Photoshop plugin and MS Office add-in.

As a bonus perk, you can use Pexels to find incredible HD wallpapers for your desktop and mobile phone.

NEGATIVE SPACE

Negative Space treats you to a variety of gorgeous high-quality free stock photos. The collection is divided into 16 categories including Architecture, Business, and Technology. You can use these categories, the search button or particular tags to locate the best photo for your blog post.

This collection of CC0 licensed photos is regularly updated by a community of generous and dedicated photographers. By signing up, you can get all the latest photos directly to your inbox.

GRATISOGRAPHY

you’re looking for creative and quirky photos, which are absolutely free, Gratisography is the place to be. Theirs is a small collection of largely unconventional photos. You can tell that they aim for high quality, not quantity.

You can sift through the collection via the categories or by performing a search. People and Whimsical categories are especially popular within the community. You can also sign up for their weekly newsletter for updates about new pictures.

Do you have any experience with the sites mentioned? Browse through these photo sites for making stunning images your next blog post.

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