Advice on finding and selecting photographs for using in a company website?

Hi,

We are about to start designing our company website and are needing free, or low-cost, highquality photographs for use in our site.

Does anybody have any advice on finding, and selecting, free or low-cost photographs online?

All ideas and advice would be much appreciated.

Hi garysvpa,

This recent thread will give you some good leads:

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/forums/other-discussions/31058-stock-photos-best-place.html

Good luck!
Jayne

Stock photography website can be good.
Be careful not to get photos that all look very flat & generic.

Plan your site a little .... colours, textures & content & then think what images will compliment all of your elements.

Good editing & being creative with the images you aquire is also a very beneficial.
For example you sometimes can get a few images out of one by cropping or editing.

You don't have any friends that are photographers at all?

Good luck with it.

Agree, stock photography needs to truly represent your brand in a very local fashion. The worst thing to have is stock photography that makes your site look like another generic templated site, which has no credibility.

Some good ones are:

istockphoto.com
shutterstock.com

Stock photography is always an option but the words "free/low cost" and "high quality" in the same sentence... well let's just say you get what you pay (or don't pay) for.

One of my valued regular clients went down this path, and it was a disaster! She has since seen the value in investing in professional photography tailored to her business needs.

First impressions count and can make or break a business, I would be very careful of going for the "cheap" option to cut costs, in the long run it can cost more than what you think you are saving.

Thank you very much for your inputs! I agree free stock photos look generic, as other sites could use the same image.

Hi Gary

I recently went through a similar dilemma for our website. As we are initially targeting clients on the Central Coast I decided to approach a local photographer to see if I could licence some of his works.

Take a look at www.hostonthecost.com.au and I hope you agree, his pictures are quite spectacular.

My message is there are lots of very talented amateur photographers out there and searching for pictures you like on Flickr and 500px.com might help you identify someone with an impressive portfolio.

Offer them something for their efforts and I think you may be surprised with the impact it could make for an affordable investment. Free is not always a good thing.

Cheers,

Peter

Hi all,

I have to agree with OpusNOIR - free/low cost and high quality do not happen together. As an example, I went to a networking event and collected some business cards... when I was recording the details, I had a sense of deja vu... went back through the stack and confirmed that two of the people there had used the free business card offer from one of our well known printing companies - so I had two cards whose ONLY difference was the name on them.... I'm sure the cards were cheap - but so was the impression they left, when I compared the two!

HTH,

Kathy

It may be a bit more expensive, but you do get what you pay for; Getty Images would be worth a look. All the best.