I need an image for my website. But what are the options?

I’m not going to say that an image is worth a thousand words (or maybe I just have). It’s an often repeated phrase that through repetition has lost much of its meaning. People say it without really thinking about it. Like those that say literally when they actually mean figuratively.

But it is true that the impact of a good image cannot be understated whether it aims to be art or it forms part of a larger design. An image can used to convey information, tell a story, illicit an emotional response or simply provide visual interest to an otherwise bland design; and in all cases sourcing good imagery is vital.

But where can we find fantastic images that people respond to? Sometimes we might have good imagery already to hand, buried in our hard disks. But we’re not always that lucky and instead we have to go out and find a photo that matches the idea we have floating round in our heads.

Google Image Search?

It can be tempting to see Google Image search as the answer to finding the perfect image. It’s free, quick and has almost the entire Internet of images for you to choose from. There’s just one little problem; copyright.

If you’ve watched a movie you’ve probably seen the anti-piracy messages at the start that display the following message:

“You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. Then why would you steal a movie.”

Images are bound by copyright laws just as movies and music are and if you use images found on Google you’re probably breaking copyright law. Some people don’t care about this. They either don’t understand that these images are copyrighted or they think no one will find out. But you might be surprised with how aggressively some companies such as Getty Images protect their copyright.

So with Google best avoided, where do we get our images from?

Hire a photographer

I’m going to try and list the alternatives in terms of cost, and the most expensive way to get images is to hire a professional photographer to take them for you.

The costs can be pretty steep if you’re not taking photos of your staff sat at their desk. If you venture outside then you have to factor in the cost of travel as well as props and actors; all important in achieving the perfect end result. But while the cost can be prohibitive for some smaller companies the finished product is far superior to what you’d find elsewhere.

With a photographer you’ll find yourself with a photo that is completely original, exactly as you need it and there will be no issues over copyright either.

Advantages: An original and perfect shot, just as you need it
Disadvantages: Often expensive and time consuming

Stock Photography

Stock photography websites are a marketplace for photographers and illustrators to sell their work; and there’s loads of them. The cost of individual images varies depending on the website. Getty Images, for example, can charge thousands of pounds for a single image and is more a service to burn through money than a realistic source of imagery for many businesses.

At Bronco we often use iStock, which is now owned by Getty Images, where the cost of images ranges from a few pound upwards and cost depends largely on size, quality and license chosen. There are millions of photos to choose from so there’s a pretty good chance you will find what you’re looking for.

But within these millions of high quality, professionally taken photos is a number of images that fit a stock photo “look”. Often studio set and involving actors looking to camera the result is an unnatural and staged appearance that many creative professionals avoid at all costs.

These give a little insight into how terrible stock photos can be (not all safe for work):

• Buzzfeed
• Bad Stock Art
• Bad Stock Photo
• Stock Fail/

Once you mentally start removing these types of photos from your shortlist there is still the challenge to find something that isn’t already in use by your competitors or throughout the wider web. It’s a near impossible task as every good stock photo has been used before, and instead you have to use your best judgement on whether stock imagery is right for your intended use or if there’s a way to change the photo to make it less recognisable.

Advantages: Cost effective (mostly), professional photography
Disadvantages: Not always unique and can have an overly staged look

Update: iStock has since changed their pricing structure as well as switching to single pricing irrespective of image size. Unless you consistently bought print quality images I believe this makes iStock more expensive than before and so as cost effective as it once was.

Take them yourself

This one may or may not cost more than stock photography. It depends on if you’re stepping in for a hired professional and still have all the ancillary costs of props, actors and travel or if you’re just taking simple shots where the costs are low and hiring a professional isn’t necessary.

With photography you really do get what you pay for. There are a number of fantastic amateur photographers that can achieve results comparable to professionals but there are also many of us that lean too heavily on things such as Instagram style filters to improve what we’ve shot.

Taking a photo of something is easy, even a monkey can do it. But if your photo needs to tell a story or do more than just be a literal representation then a greater understanding of the medium is required to achieve the best results.

We can’t all be great photographers and while taking photos yourself can be the perfect option I’d always recommend hiring a professional if the image you need is a part of an important marketing campaign or if you don’t yet know the difference between exposure and aperture.

Advantages: Cheap and quick
Disadvantages: Quality varies depending on skill level

Flickr

Flickr is sort of like Google Image Search for people who know not to use Google Image Search. There’s a huge number of free images taken by people of all skill levels that you can use on your website. But a variety of licensing options for photographers’ means that not all images are free to use and those that can be used require an attribution link back to the copyright holder.

While in many cases adding an attribution isn’t a big deal it’s not always prudent to start modifying images to include the name of the photographer or to place an extra link on a web page. It very much depends on if you’re using the images to support content such as those in a news article or as part of a greater design instead.

In the case of the latter you’d want to search out CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) images that are completely royalty free and don’t require an attribution. Unfortunately Flickr don’t differentiate all the different Creative Commons licenses so finding CC0 images on Flickr is difficult and sourcing stock photos instead can save you a lot of time.

Advantages: Cheap with a huge collection
Disadvantages: Often requires an attribution link and images vary wildly in quality

Royalty Free Images

These are the best kind of images; they’re completely free and don’t even require any under-the-counter style deals such as attributions or pay by tweet for you to get a hold of them.

Royalty free images were always something of a rarity, and still are, but now we seem to be entering a period of kindness where content creators, including photographers, are releasing more of their work for free to provide other content creators with high quality resources to use in their own work.

So far I’ve not come across any big websites attempting to build a huge collection of royalty free images which does make it difficult to easily search for a specific image you have in mind but there are a number of smaller websites of curated high quality images.

• Unsplash
• Picography
• Gratisography
• Little Visuals
• Magdeleine

The subject matter and range of images available is pretty limited at the moment. For example, you’ll find very few images that include people. Also many of the images are often heavily edited which does make them a little less versatile.

With a smaller set of images to pick from it can be harder to find a specific image you need and so it’s unlikely you’d find images suitable for communicating specific ideas. Instead they’re great for situations where visual interest is the goal and only a tenuous link to the subject matter is required, hence why we often use these types of images for featured images on our blog.

Advantages: Free, not that you’d tell from the quality
Disadvantages: Limited number available with no easy system to search or filter

The Perfect Image

If you’re searching the web for pre-existing photography it’s always going to involve some form of compromise and you will often find yourself settling for something similar due to not being able to find that image that perfectly matches what you originally intended.

That’s why the perfect images has to be one you create yourself. You might not be the one holding the camera but with creative input you can help create something new and original that perfectly mirrors your idea and does more than just provide visual interest.