Stock Photography Resources
What Is A Stock Photo?
Just face it, the world wide web would be real bland without nice imagery. Stock photos are a great way to increase professional look and appeal. There are many types of stock images, but I will break down the two basic areas. There are photos that cost money and photos that don't. Simple as that. Stock photography can get very expensive. So I will comprise a list of many royalty free sites as well as pay per image (or credit) site.
Stock.XCHNG, the leading FREE stock photo site! Has hundreds of thousands of professional high resolution images to choose from. Basically any category you can think of. This site has free images and images you can get if you purchase credits. You would be amazed to find so many quality images for no cost. This site is a user community and submissions make their content. Some images have restrictions so be sure to check, and if you are not clear if you could use it the way you would like to, send them an email. Copyright Infringement is a big deal!
iStockPhoto, is a great site as well. Although you need to pay for this one, $1 is nothing compared to other sites. A great thing about this is, if you are a photographer you can submit your own images to sell! It costs nothing to sign up and you can start downloading or selling images as soon as you login.
ComStockImages, is a great place to find the perfect image that nobody else would carry, but at a cost...Prices there start around $149.95-$399.95 per image.
BigStockPhoto, is another great very cheap image source! Each image just $1 - $2 and the quality is amazing. Getting stock photography at that price is a bargain, If it is the image I wanted even $50.00 would be reasonable.
I personally have used Stock.XCHNG for a very long time. I have gotten many high quality professional user submitted images from them doing client work and other side projects. I really do recommend them.
Important! Royalty Free does not mean it is free! It means that you can use it how ever you would like once it is purchased!
It is very important to carefully follow all copyright restrictions with the image. If it says for personal use only, then you cant put it on a website offering a service, you could get sued. Many times a simple email to the photographer is all it takes, people make compromises.
Where Do I Go From Here?
This article hopefully has given you some resources to find good quality photography to use in projects, flash, the web or what ever you would like to use it for.
If you are interested in photography and other areas of design, check out the article about Photoshop, the image editing and manipulation software tool that drives the industry. If you are interested in photography itself but just don't know where to begin, then check out the photography section and take a look at some top of the line and most popular cameras.
