Written on December 27th, 2005 at 04:12 pm by Darren Rowse
Finding Photos for Your Blog
My name is Allan Barizo and I write for The Information Bank and the freeware review.
A picture may be worth a thousand words but nobody wants to pay a thousand dollars for rights to use it in their blog. Why pay money to put someone’s photos in an article? We’ve read from Arieanna Foley and Darren about the importance of incorporating pictures in blogs.
- Readers speed-read; images grab their attention
- Pictures illustrate points
- Photos make blogs look aesthetically pleasing (when used correctly)
- Images convey credibility
So, where to find cheap photography to illustrate articles? How about FREE stock photography? Enter the Stock.XCHNG. And no, I’m not talking about Wall Street.
The Stock.XHNG is a site for amateur photographers and visitors to share and comment on each otherís stock photography. Everything listed is pre-filtered by the owners of the website for inappropriate, low-resolution, or low-quality images. All of the pictures are gratis. Though free, some need permission from the original photographer in order to use them. I usually frequent the Stock.XCHNG for my web design projects. But, they can be used for anything, including blog posts.
So, visit the Stock.XHNG and include pictures with your articles. Remember, even though a picture is worth a thousand words, it does not have to cost a penny!
31 Responses to “Finding Photos for Your Blog” - Add Yours
hagrin
December 27th, 2005 4:37 pm
As an American reader, I’m having problems accessing this site. Anyone else having a problem?
IO ERROR
December 27th, 2005 4:52 pm
Stock.XCHNG, unfortunately, is frequently very slow, if you aren’t accessing it from the Asia-Pacific region.
brem
December 27th, 2005 5:07 pm
It’s a shame. They need a better server.
duncan
December 27th, 2005 5:09 pm
Cant access it either, seems to be down, I’ve checked the link in Google and it’s right.
Mel Logan
December 27th, 2005 5:13 pm
yeah that site is super slow, I was looking everywhere for pics for my blog, the sites I did find charged waaaaay too much, so I decided to get a dig. cam and try that out…
Mathew Patterson
December 27th, 2005 5:46 pm
IstockPhoto is a reasonable cheap option for some good quality stock photos.
George
December 27th, 2005 5:48 pm
Site doesn’t work. Why not use Flickr, I see a lot of professional blogs using Flickr picture.
GPS Reviews
December 27th, 2005 6:11 pm
here some resource ;)
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/resources/stock-photos.html
Steve
December 27th, 2005 7:02 pm
Darren,
It seems the url is not correct. This is the url that worked for me. I hope they are what Allan Brizo was referring to: http://stockxchng.com/
Jayson
December 27th, 2005 7:29 pm
FREE FREE FREE
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
CREATIVE COMMONS PEOPLE!!
George
December 27th, 2005 7:54 pm
Where is Darren to kick the ass of that spammer Steve.
The URL he posted is a spammy site that only lists sponsored links.
The correct address is what is in the post above. If it doesn’t work, just try again. It works for me.
Allan Barizo
December 27th, 2005 8:22 pm
Hey Everyone!
Thank you so much Darren for posting my article! It was a shock to me when my brother told me to check ProBlogger for a surprise. It’s a nice “Boxing Day” gift.
To everyone else, I’m so sorry that the website is not working for you. It is so untimely that it should go down. In fact, my sister was complaining to me right now because she was looking for pictures for her blog. I speculate that it is because the number of viewers from ProBlogger visiting it. Normally, it runs very fast.
The URL in the article is correct. I double-checked it in my bookmarks and on Google. Please try again later if it doesn’t work now. I assure that it will be worth it!
Happy Holidays
Allan
Michael Martine
December 27th, 2005 9:57 pm
I’ve used stockxchange before, and they were always slow. I’m not complaining for the price. Here’s another one you may want to try:
http://www.morguefile.com/archive/
Not morgue as in dead people. It’s an old term.
I, too, have had good success with pics from flickr, choosing from among the CC licensed photos.
Misa
December 27th, 2005 11:45 pm
I like to use Morgue File also. It’s very reliable.
Shane
December 28th, 2005 1:13 am
I want to second the vote for iStockphoto. They have a ton of absolutely fantastic images, and all the ones I’ve seen are just $1. That’s unbelievably reasonable for the quality they offer–particularly when images make so much difference in the look of your site.
Netwalker
December 28th, 2005 2:20 am
Also another place to find cheap photos is in Fotolia. They have different prices for different uses of the images.
And the iStockphoto, it’s also a good option, I used their photos a couple of times.
john echilo
December 28th, 2005 7:17 am
Yeah..amazing header, after search thousand photos/images through Corbis.. time search the not cost images.
Anthony
December 28th, 2005 10:14 am
The Stock.XCHNG is a great resource. It’s uptime is much better now than what it was 6 months ago but people shouldn’t complain too much when the service provides access to 180,000+ photos for free. It’s a growing site that is improving with time/money.
Steve
December 28th, 2005 10:18 am
George,
I am actually appalled at your very negative comment about the my attempt to help find a solution to the trouble I and others were having with the url in Darren’s article. I will not allow myself to stoop low enough to post a comment that has nothing to do with the subject matter. If the url I gave ended up taking people (myself included) to a stock photo site that has other things going on, did it occur to you that may be it was an honest mistake? I respect myself and others too much to engage in any spamming. Some of us in the blogoshpere still have integrity. I wish you well.
Steve.
Jonathan Anchen
December 28th, 2005 1:08 pm
Darren, thanks for the pointer to this site. I had no trouble accessing it from the URL in your post. Maybe it was easy since I am in India.
Chris
December 28th, 2005 5:56 pm
I’ve been using this website for a couple of months just for photoshopping stuff. It’s a wonderful site for pictures!
sara
December 29th, 2005 12:45 am
Yeah it is very slow. But it has great pictures.
Paul -V-
December 29th, 2005 2:07 am
Stock.XCHNG is great. I use it all the time. The site does tend to run a tad slow sometimes.
Milo
December 29th, 2005 4:28 am
Thanks for the resource. Well appreciated.
Robert
December 29th, 2005 4:34 am
I like http://www.istockphoto.com
For $1 each, it’s not a bad deal at all.
The Information Bank
December 29th, 2005 7:52 am
Free Legal High Quality Stock Photography
This week, I rereleased and revised an old article on free stock photography. I’d like to thank Darren Rowse for publishing it on his ProBlogger site. You can find the article at Finding Photos for Your Blog.
…
James
December 29th, 2005 8:38 pm
And I use my Sony Ericsson k700i. Of course, the photos are probably not as good quality as the web site listed in the post (which works VERY well from down here in South Africa).
Thanks,
James
LcF
January 2nd, 2006 9:56 pm
I have a list of free image stocks at my blog.
Helen Price
January 20th, 2006 8:16 pm
I think that its simply impossible to follow the breaking of authors rights on the internet. That’s a huge problem.
Chris
May 9th, 2006 5:35 pm
Another good site for free stock photos is Free Pixels
David Bradley
August 3rd, 2007 3:06 am
As a freelance sci-tech journalist of almost 20 years standing, text and image copyright has been a big part of the business end of my work. As such, I recently wrote an advice piece on what’s on and what’s not on in terms of credit and copyright. (It’s not bona fide legal advice so take at face value only, but hopefully it could be helpful to some of your readers).
Please feel free to comment on that item and link back to your own excellent post and list of image sources.
David Bradley Science Writer
http://www.sciencebase.com
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