The stock photography industry started in the 1920s, by H. Armstrong Roberts . At that time, it was primarily a way for professional photographers to market the duds from commercial photography shoots. But since then, it has taken off and many people (including me) frequently use these high quality photos for professional use on print collateral, blogs and websites. Images most requested are common landmarks; conceptual and major events that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes.
There are several sites that provide these photographs in a multitude of categories. Each site has a repository for these various categories that allows for creative design assignments. The compilation of this repository reflects just how important imagery is to every medium. Here are just a few of the top, highly-used sites that will surely fulfill all your stock photography needs.
Thanks to Top Ten Reviews from TechMedia Network, showcases the 2013 Stock Photography Service Comparisons and what they offer its consumers.
Although this listing is quite helpful, these are my top picks due to availability, quality and pricing.
A leader in digital multimedia resource that includes:
Image pricing depends on what type of licensing you want and prices for royalty-free images, footage clips, etc. are based on file size. They have a broad range of editorial images as well.
Shutterstock is one of the leading global image marketplace headquartered in New York City. They have an extensive library of royalty-free stock photos, vectors, and illustrations available by subscription and a la carte. You can browse the library for free. This great news as Shutterstock adds over 100+ images to its library each day.
Known for the Internet’s “original member-generated image and design community,” reputation iStockphoto offers millions of royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files from over 70,000 worldwide artists. Talk about impressive. And the smaller photos you need for blogs or as thumbnails on a document, can be as low as $1.oo!
Yes, we all know that 123rf boasts about their 19,484,862 Royalty Stock photos! But what most people don’t know is that there’s a fairly large, evolving database that houses several images FOR FREE! They have a wide variety of commercial and editorial images, video footage, audio clips, logo designs and illustrations that are easy on the eyes and your wallet.
