Finding quality images and photos for complementing an important article, essay or news report is already a challenge for many. Imagine when the goal is not only to find good images, but also to find some that you could openly and freely use without needing to pay royalties or one-time publishing rights.
Nonetheless the task would seem, at first, a tough one to carry out; however, times are changing fast, and there were few and little-known online free image resources available — until today. New ones are appearing and offering a great assortment of quality pictures, an alternative to the expensive ones at traditional stock image libraries.
But as long as your subjects do not require photos of art masterpieces stored in world museums, or faces of popular stars, you may be likely to find highly interesting visual alternatives by exploring the world of free and grassroots image clearinghouses.
It's never been a secret that I feel one of the best resources of grassroots free images online is the Stock Exchange at http://sxc.hu, It's an impressive collection of many high-quality photos taken by amateur photographers from around the world. As a matter of fact, you can be one of the many contributors to this outstanding and fast growing image clearinghouse.
The images displayed at the Stock Exchange are searchable in multiple ways and offer thumbnail views that are large enough to provide a good glimpse of what the shots contain (unlike other alternative image libraries that have reduced the size of these thumbnails too much, which makes it harder to appreciate the image's content without loading a larger version of it — adding a lot of time to the overall searching process).
The Stock Exchange archives more than 100,000 images for which the photographers have established re-usage terms, leaving most of them available for immediate re-use.
But, it's difficult to access the Stock Exchange at times due to the increasing demand and the need to move everything to larger and more powerful servers. Until it settles down, this is the perfect time to look around and break out of the soothing and rewarding experience sxc.hu has been creating.
Here are interesting alternatives:
72) FreeLargePhotos
http://freelargephotos.com/
FreeLargePhotos is a website specialized in hosting large, hi-resolution images. All images are royalty-free and can be used only for non-commercial purposes.
If you need an image to promote a product or a service, you have to ask permission to FreeLargePhotos and buy a nonexclusive license for $50.
There are several categories to organize your images or you can use the internal search-engine to find the photo you are looking for. Larger sizes for certain images are available upon request.
Photographers are welcome to upload their own images for free..
71) Stock.xchng
http://www.sxc.hu/
Stock.xchng is the free counterpart of StockXpert.com. Stoc.xchng contains only high-resolution, royalty-free photos you can download and use for non-commercial purposes.
After registering, you can choose between different categories, store a favorite set of images inside a private collection (a lightbox), and also use statistics to see the images that are most popular among the user community.
Photographers can also upload their own images for free..
70) Free Stock Photography
http://www.adigitaldreamer.com/gallery/
Free Stock Photography is an open, royalty-free gallery that contains many high resolution free images.
Images can be searched using the built-in search engine, or by browsing specific categories like "Most viewed", "Top rated" or "Last uploads". You can also access photos by album lists.
Images cannot be uploaded.
