Hello, friends! Who wants to talk favorites? I find favorite things is always a popular topic. *Twirls through living room doing my best Julie Andrews impression* This particular edition is going to talk about images. Before we get started, though, let me say that images, just like fonts, software, books, and basically any other type of creative work are subject to various kinds of copyright laws, so always, always read the licensing agreement for any place you source stuff. Okay, onto the good stuff!

Follow me to the magical land of Pixa… baaaaaay…

Pixabay - I can’t believe it took me so long to discover this site! It’s amazing! The images are all super high quality, it has an easy search function, and it’s user supported. It even has videos and vector graphics. Plus, their license is one of the most straightforward around. I found a picture of this wrinkly, sorta weird looking, old person willing to guide you there.

Unsplash - I haven’t actually used Unsplash very much on my own. Read.Write.Repeat podcast has used it for a bunch of their writing prompts, though. All of which are really interesting. It’s also where my new bullet journal, Trello, and the Over app gets their images, so I know a lot of people like it. Again, the images are really high quality and the license is really easy to understand. I especially recommend their Collections page because, whew! I could trawl some of those pretties all day.

Hey, that funny little guy showed up again. This time on Unsplash. Strange.

Canva - Unlike Unsplash, I have had a lot of experience with Canva. I’ve tried their free version and their paid version. The free version is fine. After all, it’s free, so you really can’t complain much. Unsurprisingly, the paid version is a little more user friendly (in that you can filter a bit better). Canva has several different licensing levels, however, which I find confusing. There are $1 photos for you to use once, but then there’s the option of a “Multi-Use” license with them, which I think lets you reproduce it more times for about $10 (again, read the licensing terms carefully). And then there’s “Unlimited.” On top of that there’s Pro, which is a whole other thing. Bah, that’s more than I can be bothered with. I will say, though, it is one of the best places around for creating really nice social media posts, especially if you need to stick to a certain look or branding.

The Graphics Fairy - This one is a little different. The Graphics Fairy has both vintage photographs and illustrations, so the aesthetic is pretty specific. Even their Terms of Use are a little different. In The Graphics Fairy’s own words:

Here’s our guide sporting a completely different style over at The Graphics Fairy.

“The Graphics Fairy is an Angel Company. You are free to use all clip art images in any of your projects created for resale or pleasure. Please do not use more than 6 of the graphic images within any one project, or within a single page of a blog or website. My images may not be used on free graphics sites ( in other words if you post free graphics on your site, do not post my images on your site to give away for free). You may sell my graphics, as collage sheets, or printables, if you desire, providing you follow the 6 image rule. A link to the Graphics Fairy is very much appreciated, when including the images on your blog or website. Thank you!”

As always, see full Terms of Use on the website. They also have tons of project ideas, tutorials, product reviews, and other crafty type things.

Flickr - Flickr has a vast collection of photos of all different qualities, but all the photos have different licenses attached to them. Thankfully, Flickr has a filter to help you… well, filter them. There’s a lot more to the site too, like classes for enhancing and modifying photos. But TBH, I haven’t explored it all that deeply.

Why does this guy keep showing up? He was on Flickr this time.

Pinterest - Ah, Pinterest, the place where hours of your day go to disappear. Even while I was linking to it just now, I got sucked in. Pinterest has some amazing stuff. I especially love it for inspiration boards, and I’ll often paste the pictures into Scrivener’s research section when I’m drafting. Buuuuuuuut it’s also kind of the wild west. Pinterest reminds me a lot of Google Image Search because there’s no way to filter. Stuff is uploaded and copied and repinned, so I definitely don’t recommend using it for anything you intend for commercial use. Blog entries, Instagram, and the like? Ummm… 🤷‍♀️ I’m not a lawyer, so I definitely can’t and am not in any way, shape, or form giving legal advice. And not even lawyers will give you a straight answer about “fair use,”* so I’m definitely not touching that with a ten-foot pole. Zero legal advice to be found here. I just know for me in my life, I take pictures found on Pinterest outside of Pinterest with extreme caution.

*I know lawyers won’t give straight answers about “fair use” because I’ve been to educational panels about copyright and “fair use.” And no one on the panels have ever said anything concrete. It was all, “use your best judgement” and “it depends on the situation.”

What did I tell you? StockSnap immediately impressed me. Look how fabulous our guide looks there!

StockSnap.io - I only just discovered StockSnap while researching other stock photography sites for this entry. I gotta tell ya, I’m immediately impressed. I’ve explored a lot of sites over the years, so I can pretty quickly tell when one stands out. And this one does. Again, the licensing situation is super straightforward. The only thing I notice is that it doesn’t seem to have a Safe Search option, which a lot of other places do.

That’s just a smattering of what’s available out there. So where do you go for stock photography and the like? Let me know in the comments below 👇. Thanks for reading!

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