As every blogger knows, producing quality content is essential for success. But building a loyal following and growing your audience requires more than just well-written blog posts. To draw readers in and maintain their attention, you also need appealing images.
In this blog post, we’ll explain where to find royalty-free stock images, and hacks to help you find the perfect aesthetic blog photos on stock image sites.
Why Choose Aesthetic Stock Images for Your Blog?
Choosing the right images can completely transform your blog. In an ideal world, you would have the time to go out and capture your own images for every blog post. In reality, this isn’t always possible. So, stock images for bloggers are an essential resource.
Free Stock Image Sites
Finding royalty-free stock images can be an issue. You don’t want to use the wrong images and end up accused of a copyright breach. To help avoid any copyright-related drama, it’s wise to focus your image search on sites that specifically offer aesthetic royalty-free photos. Many stock image sites, including Pexels and Pixabay, feature images that are available under the Creative Commons License, specifically the CC0 License. This license means that the image’s creator has given up their copyright and released the work into the public domain so that it can be used by others.
Below are some of the most popular free stock image sites. This list also includes some of the newest sites offering aesthetic stock photos for you to explore so that you can stay a step ahead of your fellow bloggers and include the freshest images in your content.
Pexels
Pexels is one of the best-known and most well-established sites for royalty-free stock images. Since its creation a decade ago, Pexels has provided hundreds of thousands of free stock images.
All photographs provided on the site are submitted by Pexels’ community of photographers, with new images being added to the site all the time. You can even add your own images to the site if you want to give back.
Pexels operates its own license and states that all photos and videos on its site are free to use. You can even edit and modify the images if you choose. However, there are a few restrictions on how you use the images. For example, you aren’t allowed to redistribute the images to other image sites.
As well as images, Pexels also has free aesthetic videos available for you to upload to your site.
Unsplash
Unsplash is home to a huge library of over 6 million free images. Unsplash currently has a community of around 375,000 photographers who contribute their images to the site for free.
Unsplash operates its own Unsplash License for the use of images on the site. This is pretty easy to follow as there are very few restrictions. The images can be used for both non-commercial and commercial purposes and you don’t need to credit the photographer, but including the image attribution is appreciated.
Pixabay
Pixabay is a popular royalty-free image site used by content creators and businesses. On the site, you will find thousands of stock images that are free for you to use, but you can make a donation to the contributor if you’re feeling generous.
Since 2019, Pixabay has been owned by Canva. A benefit of this is when you click on a Pixabay image, a button now appears allowing you to go straight to Canva to edit the image.
Pixabay’s Content License allows you to use its images for free, and to modify or adapt them to create new content.
As well as a huge collection of stock images, Pixabay also offers royalty-free vectors, illustrations, GIFs, sound effects, videos, and music.
Dupe
Dupe is a newer website that’s set to become a popular source of stock images for bloggers. If you’re looking for aesthetic blog photos, this is an excellent place to find them. Dupe prides itself on being different, and you won’t find the usual stock image photos you’ve seen time and again here. Instead, Dupe says it has a ‘relatable, social-first image bank.’
One helpful time-saving feature on Dupe is the ability to filter images by aesthetic. This gives you a much better chance of finding images that match your blog’s style quickly and easily.
In terms of licensing, Dupe allows you to use, reproduce, and adapt images from the site for free, and attribution isn’t required. Dupe simply prevents users from taking images from its site and using them to set up a similar, competing service.
Gratisography
Gratisography may not be as familiar as the likes of Pexels and Pixabay, but it’s actually been established for over a decade. If you’re looking for something a little different from your royalty-free stock images, you’ll probably find it on Gratisography.
Gratisography prides itself on being the “world’s quirkiest collection of high-resolution free stock images.” You’ll find heaps of colourful, unique images here that you won’t have seen elsewhere. The huge selection of colourful images means that it should be easy to find eye-catching images that match your blog’s aesthetic and capture the attention of your followers.
You can use Gratisography images for both commercial and personal purposes free of charge. However, there are restrictions on the way that the images can be used, for example, they can’t be used for immoral purposes. Some pictures may also be subject to other restrictions, such as privacy or publicity rights, or intellectual property rights. So, Gratisography recommends that you carry out due diligence.
Canva
Since 2013, Canva has been a go-to site for anyone trying to set up professional-looking blog posts, web pages, and social media images, thanks to its huge collection of templates and many design elements and features. Canva is also home to a huge collection of royalty-free images, ready for you to add to your designs.
Photos on Canva are available for you to use for both personal and commercial purposes. However, you cannot pass the images off as your own, or resell or redistribute the images. It’s important to note that while the Canva license allows you lots of freedom in how you use the images, not all of its images are free.
Canva’s stock images library contains a mix of free-to-use images and Pro images. To access the Pro images, you need to sign up to become a Pro User and pay a subscription. You can tell which images are free and which are Pro by looking for a crown icon in the corner of the image. If the crown is there, it’s a Pro image and you’ll need to subscribe to use it.
Kaboompics
Kaboompics offers a huge range of free stock image photos and makes it easier to find aesthetic images that perfectly match the vibe of your blog. Spotted a photo on Kaboompics that perfectly matches your blog’s aesthetic? Kaboompics allows you to see the full photoshoot, which is a great way to incorporate consistent imagery into your blog posts.
The Kaboompics license allows users to download and use its images freely. You can modify and edit them, and you don’t need to provide attribution. However, as with other image sites, attribution is appreciated by contributors.
Free Images
Free Images is a photo repository offering a wide selection of free images. You’ll find more than just royalty-free images on Free Images. The site also has vectors, clipart, PSD files, and icons available to download at no charge.
The Free Images license allows images on its site to be used freely for both commercial and personal use. However, there are some restrictions in place. For example, the images cannot be used unlawfully, and you cannot pass off the images as your own work.
Picjumbo
Picjumbo offers thousands of royalty-free images for you to use at no cost. The images are free to use for both commercial and personal use. As well as photos, Picjumbo also offers backgrounds that you can use on your blog posts. All images are arranged into collections to make it easier to find relevant photos to use within your content.
Picjumbo also offers a Premium membership. This is a one-off purchase that gives you lifetime early access to images before they’re published on the main site, easy downloads, and more.
Refancy
Refancy offers stock images with a difference. The images available on the site are AI-generated and free for you to use.
Rather than your usual run-of-the-mill stock images, Refancy images are curated into collections for the use of lifestyle brands and creatives. This means the content available has a focus on aesthetics and visual impact.
It’s important to note that Refancy images are available for you to use free of charge right now. However, this unlimited access to free images is available during Refancy’s beta phase, so this could change as the site develops further.
Handy Hacks to Find the Perfect Aesthetic Blog Photos
Scrolling through endless photos on stock image sites but being unable to find the perfect picture for your blog post is not just time-consuming, it’s also hugely frustrating. No one wants to spend all day mindlessly searching for the perfect photo only to end up disappointed. The good news is that finding the right image doesn’t need to be stressful or take up tonnes of your time.
Now that you know where to search for aesthetic royalty-free blog photos, you just need to know how to find the perfect pics. So, why not speed up your image searches with the help of these handy hacks:
Search With a Generic Keyword
If you’re not sure of the exact type of image you want but know you want an aesthetic photo, it can be hard to know how to even begin your search to find it. You can solve this problem by entering a generic keyword such as ‘aesthetic’ or ‘styled’ in the search bar of the royalty-free image site.
Search by Aesthetic
Searching for a specific keyword such as ‘morning coffee’ or ‘fashion’ can deliver wide-ranging results. But the chances are they won’t fit with your blog’s aesthetic. So, it can be helpful to cut to the chase and search directly for the aesthetic you’re looking for, e.g., ‘cottagecore,’ ‘coquette,’ ‘y2k’ etc.
Search by Photographer
Seen an image in a style that you like, but the subject doesn’t match your blog? You can solve this by clicking on the photographer’s name. Most free image sites hyperlink the photographer’s name so that you can see the rest of the images they have contributed to the site. This is a great way to find multiple images in a photography style that you love.
Search for Synonyms
Keyword searches can sometimes deliver random results, which is really unhelpful when you have a specific image in mind. To solve this, it can be helpful to search for synonyms of your keyword instead. For example, instead of searching for ‘relationships,’ try searching for ‘first date,’ ‘in love,’ ‘couples,’ ‘holding hands,’ etc.
Browse Similar Images
So, you’ve found a few images that feature the kind of thing you’re looking for, but none of them are quite right. Rather than spending hours scrolling through and losing the images that were almost what you were looking for, you could hone in on your search by clicking on one of the images that’s almost right. Most stock image sites show ‘similar images’ or ‘related images’ underneath. Scrolling through these should help you find a selection of images that could be just what you’re looking for.
Try Editing Images
If you’ve spotted an image that features the right subject but the wrong style, you may want to get creative. As most royalty free images allow you to adapt the image, you could edit it yourself. Sometimes, simply changing the contrast or the colour scheme can help. Simply spending a little bit of time playing around with the image is often all that’s needed to make the photo perfectly match your blog’s chosen aesthetic.
