6 Free Websites for Quality Copyright Free Images -Picks of The Tired Mama-ph

Blogging.
Image credit: Pixabay

All bloggers know that images, photos, and pictures make blog posts more inviting, eye-catching, and relevant all at the same time. As they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words" and it's true. One can derive much information from one image as they can from reading 3 paragraphs of written work. For some who aren't photographers or artists such as myself, we have to rely on the use of images done by others. It may not make our work 100% authentic, but, their images help in providing an accent to our posts when representation is necessary. When one wants to stress or clarify a point to his audience, one of the best ways is to show an image and it makes all the difference.

The question is what is considered "free"? There are many websites that claim to provide free images, but include a very dense watermark in their images. If an image is considered free to use, shouldn't the image be untainted by such? Bless the few who have focused on providing the public access to high-quality images/photographs absolutely free protected by Creative Commons Zero (CC0). CC0 is the "no copyright reserved" option in the Creative Commons toolkit- it effectively means relinquishing all copyright and similar rights that one holds in intellectual work and dedicating those rights to the public domain (creativecommons.org).

As Google is strict with copyright infringement and DCMA policy, images found through plain unfiltered Google Search are subjected to copyright and using them for our purposes is infringing on their rights, thus it is preferable to use images from websites that offer a various number of images from contributors around the globe that operate on a CC0 or Creative Commons Zero License. This means images found on their site are free to use, share, and modify (if necessary) without required attribution nor contacting the original author of the image, however, any form of attribution is appreciated. This makes it easy for bloggers such as myself to "grab" images and use them even commercially. These websites are like a gold mine for me. Although these images from these websites are free to use whatever suits our purpose, I would like to stress that these images should be used responsibly and appropriately. Please do not use them obscenely.

Here are 5 Free Images Websites that provide quality copyright free images for you to use, share, modify even commercially and require no attribution.

Pixabay website
Image credit: Pixabay

1. Pixabay (www.pixabay.com)

Pixabay is a public domain imagery website and offers an array of beautiful images that you can choose from- 1.3 million images to be exact. This website was founded in November 2010 in Ulm, Germany by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger and on March 2012 they redesigned Pixabay into an interactive online community. They support 24 different languages and in 2015, started providing film footage in addition to images. Users of Pixabay are mainly bloggers, authors, graphic designers, journalists, and advertisers. I found Pixabay useful for hard to find images such as photos of the Philippines. I only did find one photo of Camiguin Island but one is good enough for me. They are sponsored by Storyblocks which allows access to users for a small fee.

2. StockSnap (https://stocksnap.io)
The StockSnap website is owned and operated by StockSnap (stocksnap.com) where you can search multiple free image hosting sites for free stock photos. StockSnap offers many elegant design images. I was able to find many Christmas holiday images which suited my needs to wish everyone a "Merry Christmas".

Pexels website
Image credit: Pexels

3. Pexels (www.pexels.com)
Pexels is another excellent website that provides high quality and free stock photos under the CC0 License and is run by Bruno Joseph, Info Joseph, and Daniel Frese. Their mission is "empowering creators" by providing free stock photos to creators all over the world and currently offers 40,000 free stock photos to choose from.  They also outsource images from Gratisography and Little Visuals.

Image credit: Unsplash

4. Unsplash (https://unsplash.com)
Unsplash, one of the pioneers of the copyright-free photography model, is a website that offers quality images and was founded 4 years ago as a humble Tumblr blog by Montreal-based entrepreneur Mikael Cho as a side-project of his company Crew. It houses over 300,000 beautiful images from 50,000 photographers worldwide. Unsplash offers photos for everyone, staying true to its CC0 license.
In addition, Unsplash offers a wide array of graphic design work done by users with their "Made With Unsplash" section.

Image credit: Life of Pix

5. Freerange (https://freerangestock.com/)
The Freerange Stock is an advertising revenue supported photographic community and was created with the goal to provide quality stock photos, for free. Photographers earn income when users click on the ads that are placed beside their submissions (don't be stingy...as a "thank you", do click on an ad). They also explain that some photographs may not be so great, but, are intended to document an intended event or object. I don't think us users have a right to complain. After all, the images are free to use.

6. Life of Pix (www.lifeofpix.com)
Last but not the least, Life of Pix. Life of Pix offers free high-resolution photography to the public and boy, are they really nice to look at. Even their "about us" page is a work of art. Created by LEEROY Advertising Agency in Montreal, they now have a partnership with Adobe Stock. They feature a photographer each week and also have an array of free videos under Life of Vids.

Worthy of Mentioning: Flickr (www.flickr.com)
Although Flickr is not completely dedicated to providing copyright-free images to the public, they are worth mentioning due to their extensive library of 3 million public domain images alone. They also house photographers that enlist a Creative Commons by 2.0 License which allows users to use and share photographs even commercially but, require proper attribution. I'm not just talking about linking the source to the image or putting "via Flickr" as its caption. A user has to provide proper attribution or you can get hit with copyright infringement. So, before you use a photo on Flickr, make sure of its copyright.

Before I end my post, out of common courtesy or simple etiquette for these websites that offer public domain imagery, any form of attribution is recommended. As you can see, I've linked the sources of the images that I have used as a simple attribution out of respect for the owner. Also, most of these websites have a "donate" page or section on their website. If you frequent their sites, maybe you could consider donating to their cause. Any amount is helpful and it's a small way of saying "thank you".

I hope this post is helpful to bloggers and if you know of any other free image hosting site, do let me know. More sources mean more to choose from.

Happy blogging!

Rose
Image credit:Pixabay