Beyond the Ordinary: Free Image Sources to Enhance Your Articles

Give readers added value and earn more money, a larger audience and a quality reputation

Photo by Elizabeth Harasimowicz from the author’s collection

Have you noticed that the quality and appeal of AI-generated images on blogs and writing platforms are going straight down the toilet? Sure, it's easy to ask Copilot or GPT to spit out an illustration, but really, folks, if you care about your writing and want to earn revenue, spend a few minutes finding quality.

Images evoke emotions, help readers remember stories, and encourage engagement. Save this extensive list of writers' resources for free-to-use images. You'll soon identify your favorite databases and take advantage of these benefits:

• Increased views

• A PR Newswire study says articles with images get 94% more readership than content without.

• Increased desire to read

• Attractive, interesting, and high-quality visuals can increase people's desire to read content by as much as 80%.

• Increased shares

• Writers who set images every 100 words are shared twice as often as other writers. Sometimes a particular image can cause a reader to hit that share button.

Popular places to find free photos and images
Be sure to read each site's rules.

Unsplash
Beautiful, free images and photos that you can download and use for any project. Better than any royalty free or stock photos. Attribution required but no membership required.

Pexels
Free stock photos & videos you can use everywhere. Royalty free stock images & copyright free pictures. No attribution or membership required.

Pixabay
Royalty-free.

Freepik
Free to use with attribution. Has some cool editing tools including a background remover.

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online
Pictures from the Library of Congress now in the public domain—they all belong to the people of the US.

Wikimedia Commons
Historical and contemporary images contributed by participants. High-resolution images of art, architecture, design, people, historical events, diagrams, maps, and more. Huge.

Canva
Offers free stock photos, royalty-free, copyright-free images on Canva's vast 2 million+ graphics library. Some are marked for academic use only.

FreeImages
Free photos, vectors, clipart, PSDs, icons, and icon sets. Read the user agreement and be sure the image you are downloading is part of the free collection.

Special collections:

Disabled and Here
Disability-led stock images celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC).

The Gender Spectrum Collection: Stock Photos Beyond the Binary
Images of trans and non-binary models to help media better represent members of these communities.

The Noun Project
Collection of icons free with attribution.

Museum collections

If you get tired of using stock photos and images, try browsing some of these collections which include works of art, graphic designs, and other visual materials owned by various museums and shared with the public for free use. Personally, I always give credit to the artist and to the museum so my readers know they are seeing something special.

Art Institute of Chicago
Belvedere, Vienna
Birmingham Museums Trust
Cleveland Art Museum
Harvard Art Museums
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Kunstmuseum Basel
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Mauritshuis, The Hague
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Munch Museet, Norway
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington
Národní galerie Praha
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Nationalmuseet Danmark
New York Public Library
Paris Musées
Pinakotheken, Munich
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Wellcome Collection, London
Yale University

One more pro-tip: Go through your own collection of photos and snapshots to see which ones could enhance your stories. If you know of other free-to-use resources, drop a note in the comments, please.