Inspired by the great post by @repholder about the dangers of copy and pasting pictures on social media…
I decided to make a list of ALL the sites I discovered over the years that have pictures and videos you can legally use and modify.
Read His Post Before You End Up in Court!
I used to be a picture thief! I admit!
When I started out on the net, I didn't think twice about swiping images and other media for my own websites. After getting a few threatening emails and takedown notices, I quickly realized that this is NOT the way to go forward if you want to make a living online.
Although one could argue that Steemit is not a commercial goal, I think it's better to be safe than sorry.
I even used some of these resources for growing Instagram accounts. All of the pictures are high-resolution and of an amazing quality.
These resources are either public domain, or they are released under the Creative Commons license.
Public domain pictures include work that has been created before 1923, or where the author has died and the work is at least 120 years old. There are a lot more rules about when a piece of media becomes a part of the public domain.
Vintage Media
The British Library
The British library teamed up with Microsoft to create a repository of over 2 million pictures. All available for free in the public domain. No attribution required! Almost all ancient books, maps, and illustrations have been scanned and uploaded.
The New York Public Library
Very similar content to the British Library. Around 700000 digital items are free to download. Featuring maps, manuscripts, video, and photographs. The search function on this one is great!
Vintage pictures by Karen Whimsy
This collection of vintage pictures and illustrations has its own niche. Mainly older pictures and clip-art, this could be useful for book and story illustrations.
New Media in The Public Domain
These sites have more modern media available. This has been created by people who voluntarily added their work to the public domain. Attribution is not required. Most of these sites use a business model that relies on ads and premium upsells. You’ll find links to ‘premium’ pictures. These are paid pictures on stock photo websites such as depositphotos or iStockphoto.
Morgue File
One of my favourite sites for high quality, royalty free pictures. Their collection is huge and new images get added regularly.
Avopix.com
Around 20.000 free pictures. The site uses a premium business model and offers millions of high definition videos for you to purchase. The free pictures are of real high quality though.
unsplash - 10 free pictures every 10 days
One of my absolute favourite sites for finding amazing quality pictures. This one is really something.
It might not boast a huge collection, but the quality it provides is mind-boggling!
They are completely free and you do whatever you want with these pictures.
Stocksnap.io
This website curates the best stock photos found around the internet. They ended up with beautiful repository of thousands of stock photos in all categories. This one, along with Unsplash, is where I get most of my pictures from.
Picjumbo.com
This site is community-based. Has an AMAZING preview option called ‘testdrive’. You can see the picture how it would look as a full-width background, or as a banner, or with certain effects applied.
This gives you a good indication if the picture would work in your project. Pretty nifty if you ask me.
pixabay.com
Almost 700.000 free stock pictures and a great search function. Also includes illustrations and vector graphics. Very high quality and straight forward user interface. It’s not surprising that this is a favourite for many people!
Free HD Videos
Vintage video by Pond5
This is an interesting collection of around 10.000 vintage videos. Most of the videos are from old army videos. You can find footage on atomic tests, the navy, WW2, and tons more! It’s very much ‘niched out’ but very useful if you’re into history.
Free HD videos by Vimeo
This vimeo group has around 250 completely free videos. This is not vintage material. Mostly oriented around nature and animals though. Good for stock material!
Pexels Video
One of my favourite sites to find quality HD videos that do not need attribution. Easily discover tons of cool material by using their handy category menu. A highly recommended site for all your stock video needs.
I hope you find this list of sites useful and that it will help you finding quality pictures without breaking copyright rules.
Have fun with it!
Jan Schets
If you're into entrepreneurship, marketing, or business, here are a few of my resources to help you out:
How to get a winning business idea PART1
How to get a winning business idea PART2
How to get a winning business idea PART3
How to automate your instagram marketing for less than $10 a month