[© MorgueFile.com/Demon Dog by Jason Nelson]
Recenty a picture researcher from a well-known publishing house had to select about 46 images for the illustration of a new fact book. After some days of research and crawling around all he had to spend was $ 164, 57. - For 46 images. He did all this without copyright infringement, with real invoices for images that 95% of the mankind would accept to see more than one time in terms of photographic quality.
He suggested some sites where you can buy affordable stock photography with a quality that won´t hurt your eyes too much. We wanted to write a big follow-up to "istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo" but we lack the time to do so right now. So here a just some links.
Yet we don´t know how all these websites pay their photographers in detail, if the photographers can make a living with it, if its all mainly burned-out five years old stock-pixel-crap, if the overall photographic quality is passably or if this is a desirable way for the future -- the fact is, that besides the RF-subscription model more and more established picture researchers are working this way; not to talk about all those "designer´s dirty litte secret" - companies out there.
Bear in mind that this list is not complete and only a personal selection. If you like to add a website -- please write a comment (this time commercial comments are welcome). And - these sites are not all "free" as they sometimes suggest, but for the "lowlowlower- budget". Some only contain a few hundreds pix, other thousands.
If you now add all the images available via a simple Google Image Search AND all the thousands of images from private photoblogs/moblogs (sometimes their owners just want to be credited)... . However, don´t forget: ask first.
-istockphoto.com (the more professional sister company is istockpro.com)
-FreeImages.co.uk (2500 original stock photos)
-MorgueFile.com
-Stock XCHNG (about 90,000 images/120.000 registered users)
-FreeStockphotos.com
-Intuitivmedia
-Freephoto.com
-BigFoto.com
-Orange-Trash
-OpenPhoto.Net
-Photographers' and Illustrators' Artist Corners | Creative Commons
-FreeStock Photography
-Image*After (also Textures)
-Pixel Perfect Digital
-DHD Multimedia Gallery (5000 strange images)
-Flyerstarter (Small Fee, Great Nightclub Promotional Photos)
-Picstyle
-mimg :: free images
-Affordable Stock Photography
-stock.kriegsnet.com
-U.S. Newswire Newsphotos (free if registered; editorial use encouraged)
Real bucks:
-StockedPhotos.com (Subscription)
-Photos.com (Subscription, 100,000 images; the big player in the background is JupiterMedia/JupiterImages who recently bought Comstock)
[© Flyerstarter.com]
[This image is NOT from UglyImages.com]
