Stock Photography You Can Build a Brand With
As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you have seen all the cheesy stock photography you will ever want to see. Much of the imagery on small business websites, print collateral and video are poor representations of the businesses and the services they offer. There just seems to be nothing “real” about much of the stock photography on the web.
In most cases we prefer to utilize free stock photography. Yes, you heard that right – free stock photography. Not only does free stock photography save on production costs; but, the imagery is far visually superior to the stock photography offered by many stock websites. Ask yourself this question – Is it really necessary to use a stock image of a “business team” that will never truly represent your brand or a close up of a staged handshake with buildings in the background on your branded marketing materials?
Here are some resources we utilize to spice up our client’s marketing:
PEXELS
https://www.pexels.com/
Curated CC0 licensed imagery. This means all the images on the PEXEL’s site are free for personal and commercial use without attribution required.
UNSPLASH
https://unsplash.com/
As they state on their website “Free do whatever you want high resolution photos.” Fantastic imagery from around the globe.
OTHER FANTASTIC PHOTOGRAPHY RESOURCES
https://stocksnap.io/
Let’s look at how powerful choosing and implementing limited well thought out free stock photography can be? Below is a link to a proof of concept brand and website we created for a team of barbers looking to open up their own shop by Newport Beach called “The Smith.” We utilized all free stock photography for this proof of concept. Notice how the branding and stock imagery tie together to provide a cohesive branded look.
One caveat about free stock photography is that the images may be too small for larger print collateral pieces; so, choose wisely and make sure that the physical size of the image will work on your print piece.
Now, it’s time for you to up your imagery game with these terrific resources.