Paid photography resources

While you can get some rather beautiful photographs for free nowadays (see my post here to find out more about that), sometimes you need to pay to get the perfect pic for what you need.

In my experience, you can find some fabulous, not too ‘stocky’ stock photos to purchase online, but it does sometimes require a bit of trawling.

Below I’ve listed my top 3 favourite websites to buy photographs from. Arm yourself with patience, and a good selection of keywords to search for. Often searching for verbs and adjectives (the feelings you want to convey with your brand) can generate great – sometimes surprising – results!

www.creativemarket.com

www.canva.com

Canva have a large selection of premium photos available for individual purchase or by subscription for $9.95/month.

www.stock.adobe.com/uk

There are some real treasures to be found here, but I do find it can take a while to uncover them sometimes. You can either purchase credit packs or a yearly subscription; images work out at between £3 – £6/photo unless you purchase one of their larger plans.

Also worth a mention

I also want to mention some of the other big name stock photography sites. They are certainly worth checking out, they just don’t make my top 3:

https://www.shutterstock.com/ 

https://www.istockphoto.com/gb 

https://www.dreamstime.com 

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/ 

There are so many websites about, and you can find many more than the ones listed here just by searching for ‘stock photography’ online. I’d recommend starting with the sites I’ve listed in this post though – you’ll probably find it easier to track down beautiful photos!

Don’t forget

A surefire way to get brilliantly branded photographs is to have some taken specifically for you. Either take your own photos (you can even get great results from phone cameras!) or hire a professional photographer for a branded photo shoot.

Know of a great website I’ve missed here? Do share it below ?

Happy hunting!