42 Impressive Free Stock Photo Collections

A camera is a save button for the minds eye!

This comprehensive compilation of websites for free stock photos can be used as reference material to create artworks. Most of its images fall under the Creative Commons License CC0, which means that the photos are not only completely free, but you are allowed to copy, modify, distribute or even perform the work for both or private and commercial use, without asking for permission.  Pictures that fall under the Attribution Licence, need the photographer mentioned when published. 

Only one restriction applies, that identifiable people may never appear in a bad light or in a way they may find offensive. And It is still a courtesy gesture mentioning the name of the photographer wherever possible.

Enjoy!
Martina Pook

40 and counting...

UNSPLASH

Free do whatever you want high resolution, highest quality stock photos. Almost better or same quality than paid stock photos, for personal and commercial use. You will love this one.

LIFE OF PIX

Free High Resolution Photos without any copyright restrictions for both personal and commercial use. Organised by the Leeroy advertising agency in Montreal and its connective of photographers. 

THE COMMONS

A connective of the world's largest organisations incl. the Library of Congress, other National Libraries and Historical bodies. Combined it is the largest collection of domain free preserved historical material. 

GRATISOGRAPHY

Another high resolution stock photo website without any copyright restrictions run by Ryan McGuire.  

KABOOMPICS

Free pictures for private and commercial use. 

FREESTOCKs

Free stock images for both personal and commercial use.

SPLITFIRE

Instant download of high quality images for free. Do what you want usage. 

STOCKSNAP.IO

Completely copyright free restrictions of stock photos. Hundreds added each week.

PIXABAY

Over 1 million high quality stock images including vectors and illustrations.  Use of photos are without restriction. This site requires that you sign up as a member.

CUPCAKE

Another quality website created by Jonas Wimmerstroem former Nilsson Lee who offers a Creative Commons License CC0 for his images. 

RAUMROT

Free handpicked and curated stock photos for commercial and personal use.

VINTAGE STOCK PHOTOS

A great collection of vintage photos from the 50's, 60's and 70's from around the world. Brilliant if you are looking for images with a free commercial license from that time.

FREERANGE

Photos from this site are either shot by Freerange Stock, drawn from Freerange archives, or contributed by talented community of photographers. 

FREEIMAGES

Nearly 400,000 free stock images, designs and illustrations. 

FREELY PHOTOS

A collection of Christian free stock photos for churches and related use.

AVOPIX

More than 120,000 images under the Creative Commons Zero Licence. They also offer vectors and videos. Also check out www.facebook.com/avopix

NEW OLD STOCK

This free stock photo site lists vintage photos from the public archives that are free of known copyright restrictions. Unfortunately this site has no search option.

PEXELS

Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos from different sources licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. All photos are nicely tagged and searchable.

FREEPHOTOS.CC

A no-frills but well designed and high quality free stock photography site. They also offer a free photo editor.

PICJUMBO

Free stock photo source.  Viktor Hanacek started this site when his stock photos were rejected for "lack of quality" by major providers. Two years later, people have downloaded more than two and half million quality pictures from picjumbo.

SKITTERPHOTO

This free stock photo site is run by photographers living in Groningen, Netherlands. It is meant as a site to find, show and share public domain images.

BARN IMAGES

Owned by two Latvian photographers who offer photographs for free that are not found on any other sites, with new added weekly images. 

BUCKETLISTLY PHOTOS

This site contains over 7000 travel photos with CCO licence all taken by photographer Pete Rojwongsuriya. 

STOCK PHOTO EDITOR

Limited but growing collection of photos that are of mid- to high quality for personal and commercial use. 

DEATH TO STOCK PHOTO

This site works on a free or premium subscription basis and releases monthly photo packs for creatives. 

JAY MANTRI

Graphic designer and photographer Jay Mantri produces photographs that will fit design projects of any kind. 

FREE NATURE STOCK

A free stock site fully dedicated to nature photography, run by Adrian Pelletier. Images can be used in whatever way you like. 

PICOGRAPHY

Another rather smaller free stock photo site in comparison to the many others we have listed, but images are of high resolution and quality.  

FOODIESFEED

A tasteful resource of free food and food related high quality stock images created by various different artists. The site intends to become one of the largest food stock image sites. 

PHOTO COLLECTIONS

This project by Vadim Goncharov is a smaller selection of photos but of high quality standard. Use is free for both personal and commercial use. 

Public Domain Archive

100% free stock photos, including for commercial purposes. What I like about this site is that most images say what they are about or where a landscape for example has been taken. 

Paint My Photo

Please note that the images listed with "Paint My Photo" can only be used as reference material for paintings and drawings. They are NOT to be used for any other commercial use other than painting. 

IM FREE

IM Free has a large amount of categories with high resolution photos free of charge. 

PUBLIC DOMAIN PICTURES

CCO licensed photographs that can be downloaded either for free or as premium at a higher resolution.

ISO REPUBLIC

The English designer and photographer Tom Eversley has a substantial free and premium stock photos selection. Unique is a small section of free videos. 

STARTUP STOCK PHOTOS

Another stock photo resource for everyone. 

STOCKSNAP

Displays hundreds of high quality, high resolution stock photos for FREE. Another incredible website you will enjoy.

PHOTOGEN

A further source  of completely free stock images for both personal and commercial use, but with a smaller collection only.

SNAPWIRE

Snapwire is a site that offers a simple service for everyone to create photographs of your choice especially made to order. But they also offer a 7 free images per week subscription into your mailbox. 

MORGUEFILE

Morguefile must be one of the oldest and long-standing stock photo website. It appears a bit old fashion and the images range from very ordinary to high quality. Please not that the images are not CCO, which means you must change part of the image to create art from it.

TRAVEL COFFEE BOOK

The travel coffee book says it all. It is a travel photo collection of the highest quality and resolution images that is growing. 

MARTINA POOK'S STUDENTS PHOTO COLLECTION

This collection of photos is kindly supplied by art students of Martina. Free reference use ONLY for fine art drawing and painting projects.