Images are needed all the time, whether you're building a website / blog or want to produce a book cover, brochure, etc. But to do so legally (and to avoid huge potential fines), you need to either buy an image outright, or buy a royalty free image with the necessary rights for your project. My favorite spot for buying images is 123RF. These days, I only do that when I can't find the right image through the two sources below.
When you're buying images, usually the higher the resolution, the more it costs. But there's a growing number of websites where artists and photographers have uploaded images that anyone can use ... 100% for free. Even for commercial purposes. And often with very high resolution.
Some of these are a hodge-podge of high-quality and low-quality images. Sometimes images are only low res. Some offer images that can illustrate many specific points and might have images on white backgrounds, which is really good for certain web uses. (I use a lot of those, mainly from Pixabay, for my video poems.)
But when you're looking for high-resolution images of more artistic photographs (not illustrations) of things like landscapes and cityscapes and food and people ... images that are vetted for you ahead of time ... then Unsplash is among the best and is worth checking out.
To be clear, these images can be used on any project even if you're making money from it. And although they welcome it, you're not required to link back to them or the artist. I've linked the above image back to its original on Unsplash (because the exposure, after all, is how the contributors are supported), but in a video or product, for instance, I wouldn't want to have to include a link on the image. So this is important.
I'm a big believer in respecting people's rights, whether its for music or images or the written word, so I always pay for the necessary rights if I want something even for just my personal use. But I also believe in the global collaboration found online, where people are willing to simply give of their knowledge and skills. It's why I put so much of my own writing and music online for anyone to enjoy, and why I love the generosity of image sites like Unsplash.
So now you know ... if you're working on a project that needs images, there's a good chance you can get them for free.
Just for Fun: You can now catch my video poem, "The Unsplash Poem."
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