Stock Photography And Diverse Image Collections For Visual Design

A collection of stock photography resources, from the most popular to the whimsical and colorful to those that focus on diverse and inclusive images.

Visual imagery, videography, and photography are an important part of your business website and blog, and all communications, marketing, promotions, and advertising efforts. The visuals used to represent your brand and communicate your message capture the attention of audiences both online and off.

While big businesses will invest in hiring a photographer to create custom photo collections for their brand initiatives, marketing campaigns, and product promotions, that approach isn’t exactly budget-friendly for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses.

That’s where stock photography comes in.

As with stock video footage, stock photography is the perfect solution for businesses owners on a budget. Stock photography puts high-quality photographs in the hands of budget-conscious businesses for a much lower fee than custom photography or even for free. It’s no wonder the stock photo market is expected to grow 5% annually to reach $4 Billion by 2023.

From website images and blog post images to videos and images that accompany social media posts and images used in advertising and all forms of marketing, businesses of all sizes are creating visual marketing content and they’re using stock photos and stock videos to do it.

• For 42% of marketers, stock photography is the most frequently used type of visual content for marketing campaigns, followed by video.
• When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. Maybe that’s because images are processed 60,000 times faster than text.
• BuzzSumo reports that articles with an image once every 75-100 words receive double the social media shares as articles with fewer images. Facebook posts with images get 2.3x more engagement than posts without images, and a tweet with images gets 150% more retweets than text-only tweets.

The thing is, finding the perfect stock photo can be tough.

People spend hours scrolling through stock photo and stock video sites, looking for the best stock photos, and searching for just the right image. Unfortunately, you’ll find the same images from the same creators on many of the most popular stock photo sites and far too many of those images look and feel the same.

It can be tempting to turn to Google Images — a search engine that returns images and visual content — as a resource. This is a dangerous game. Just because an image shows up in the Google Images results, doesn’t mean you are allowed to use it. Many images found in the Google Images search results are copyrighted or trademarked, which means you must have written permission from the owner of the photo or the copyright holder to use it.

Using free stock photos, rights-managed photography, and/or royalty-free photography and illustrations ensures that you have the proper permission to use the images you purchase or download, which can save you an expensive legal headache.

Below you’ll find two collections of stock photography sites:

1. General Stock Photography Sites: Some are industry behemoths with millions of images, others are niche-focused and offer more unique imagery. Some offer free downloads and others require a fee.
2. Stock Photography Sites Focused On Diversity And Inclusion: Sites that focus on creating and sharing imagery that highlights underrepresented groups. And again, some offer free downloads and others require a fee.

I am purposefully separating the two groups of stock photo sites to make sure those sites making diverse and inclusive imagery available don’t get scrolled past, ignored, and lost in this list. Talented creators from underrepresented communities have invested untold time, energy, effort, resources, and money to create valuable collections of visual resources.

Now it’s up to us to use them.

So scroll down, click the links, get familiar with the options available, and mix it up. Make a conscious effort to ensure your visual imagery accurately reflects your audience and the communities you do business in.

Popular Stock Photo And Illustration Resources

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authentic, Diverse, Inclusive Stock Imagery

As great as all of the stock photography sites listed above are, almost all of them have the same problem: Representation in the stock photo collections is predominantly white and fails to accurately represent the beautifully diverse makeup of our world and communities.

One of the stock photo sites I discovered when searching to find more diverse imagery for my content marketing imagery said it best: “The majority of people in the world are of color so there is no reason why stock imagery shouldn’t include them.”

Representation matters.

No matter what type of business you’re in, whether it’s traditional or digital, the imagery used to market, communicate, promote, and advertise your offers needs to represent the people engaging, browsing, buying, participating, joining, enrolling, and investing.

When someone sees another person in the imagery used by your business that looks like them, it immediately communicates: You belong.

• Using stock imagery that is diverse and inclusive — showing a variety of genders, races, ages, or abilities — ensures the imagery used to market your business reflects the communities you do business in and do business with.
• Ensuring underrepresented groups are included in brand visuals shows the people in those communities that they matter and that they are valued.
• Using photographs and illustrations that accurately portray the diversity in your audience will drive more engagement from your audience and help more people connect with your brand.
• Creating visuals that look like the audience you need to communicate with will drive more conversions because people are far more likely to do something — like attend an event, sign up for a program, enroll in a course, join a membership, hire a service provider, or buy a product — if they see other people that look like them doing it too.

It’s a small change that makes a big difference.

Thankfully the excuse, “I would have used more diverse, inclusive images but we just couldn’t find any,” no longer holds much weight because incredibly talented diverse creators from underrepresented communities have stepped up to solve the problem for you.

Below you’ll find a collection of stock photo, illustration, and imagery resources that celebrate and highlight underrepresented communities. So next time you’re searching for just the right stock image, consider starting with one of these websites and supporting these creators.

Plus, if you’re a teacher, at PicDiversity, Inc., you can access an entire library of diverse class media created just for teachers!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s It! My Collection Of Stock Photo Sites

I hope you enjoyed browsing my collection of stock photography sites — and I hope you found some new stock photo resources for your graphic design, web design, and marketing materials design projects. I’ll be updating this list as I discover new sites and resources.

While you’re here, check out my other collections of resources and tools for designers and developers:

• Tools For Working With Color, Building Gradients, And Ensuring Accessibility
• A Collection Of Icon Libraries For Your Next Design Or Development Project
• Stock Video Clip And Audio Track Resources For Content Creators
• Graphic Design And Website Design Tools For Professional And DIY Designers
• 40+ Background Pattern Generators And Design Pattern Resources
• CSS Tools And Code Generators To Speed Up The Web Development Process

And of course, stay tuned for more posts like these!