The images created by photographers who are trying to earn a portion of their living from their work represent very small minority of the total images that can be found on the Internet.
Every day the number of images on the Internet that require licensing becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the total. While there may be 2 billion unique images online that photographers have on offer for licensing, that number is a very small percentage of the total images available for viewing.
Many photographers have no interest in licensing their work and are happy to make their images available for Free. These photographers have every right to give their images away if they choose. Many of these free images may not be of subjects that business people need for their commercial purposes, but some will.
Photographers who hope to license their work need to be aware of this competition. Below is a list of some of the sites people use when looking for free images. It should be noted that on Flickr alone there are 142,760,121 images with a Creative Commons license. These image may be used for free with a few restrictions.
In addition, people often find images they would like use as they randomly search the Internet for information related to their business, industry or personal interests. When they stumble on such an image there is usually no way for them to know who created it or how to contact that person to request permission to use it. Most of those who stumble on images in this way tend to believe that the majority of image creators won’t care – might actually be happy – if someone else uses their image. Since there is no easy way to ask for permission they usually just grab the image and use it.
PhotoClaim says that when they search the Internet for images photographer are trying to license 94% of the uses they find have been used without permission or a proper license.
Most people prefer to be honest and do the right thing, but if we make it extremely difficult for them to do what we would like, they may just take the image and hope for the best. One thing photographers could do make it easier for potential users to properly license their work is to support the idea of an
Image Creator Locator (ICL). Also see
this story.
| Albumarium |
http://albumarium.com/ |
| Barnimages |
https://barnimages.com/ |
| Burst by Shopify |
https://www.burst.com/ |
| Canva |
https://www.canva.com/photos/free/ |
| Death of Stock Photos |
https://deathtothestockphoto.com/ |
| Flickr |
https://www.flickr.com/ |
| FoodiesFeed |
https://www.foodiesfeed.com/ |
| Free Food Photos |
http://freefoodphotos.com/ |
| Freestock.org |
https://freestocks.org/ |
| Gastisography |
https://gratisography.com/ |
| Good Stock Photos |
https://goodstock.photos/ |
| Jay Mantri |
https://jaymantri.com/ |
| Kaboom Pics |
https://www.kaboompics.com/ |
| Life of Pix |
https://lifeofpix.com |
| Little Visuals |
http://littlevisuals.com |
| Magdeleine |
https://magdeleine.co/ |
| MMT Stock |
https://mmtstock.com |
| Morguefile |
https://morguefile.com/ |
| NegativeSpace |
https://negativespace.photoshelter.com/index |
| New Old Stock |
http://www.newoldstock.com/ |
| Pexels |
https://www.pexels.com/ |
| Picjumbo |
https://picjumbo.com/ |
| Picography |
https://picography.co/ |
| Pikwizard |
https://www.pikwizard.com/ |
| Pixabay |
https://pixabay.com/ |
| Polar Fox |
http://photos.polarfox.com/ |
| Rawpixel |
https://www.rawpixel.com/ |
| Reshot |
https://www.reshot.com/ |
| Shot Stash |
https://shotstash.com/ |
| Skitterphoto |
https://skitterphoto.com/ |
| Startup Stock Photos |
http://startupstockphotos.com/ |
| Stocksnap.io |
https://stocksnap.io/ |
| Stockvault |
https://www.stockvault.net/ |
| StyledStock |
https://styledstock.co/ |
| Travel Coffee Book |
http://travelcoffeebook.com/ |
| Unsplash |
https://unsplash.com/ |