Stock photography is one of the most popular forms of photography available online, and for a good reason. If you need an image for your project, you can’t just pull something off Google Images because that would be an illegal violation of copyright.
A stock photography website is a place where lots of photographers come together and upload their images so that lots of prospective customers can browse through them and find the image or images that suit their needs.
With a proper stock photo site, customers get access to a library of thousands and in some cases millions of images, knowing that the photos have been made available to content creators for use in various projects.
If you are looking for a stock photo based website we have a recommendation for you. We would suggest you try Freerange Stock.
Some of the important features of Freerange Stock are discussed below.
Free images
They call themselves Freerange Stock for a reason. All the images available on the website can be used for free. I repeat that. All the images contained on Freerange Stock can be downloaded and used for free without paying them a dime. There are no hidden charges or ambiguous taxes involved.
No credits required
Sometimes image publishers may not want to give credits to the photographer. Maybe their publication doesn’t have space for that or maybe you think cramming the credits into your text may distract the readers.
Whatever your reason, if you are using an image from Freerange Stock you don’t necessarily have to give author credits. If you want you can do so, but even if you don’t want to, you can still use the image.
Photographers can use their AdSense ads
Since Freerange Stock charges nothing from its customers for image usage, the question arises how do they support the site? Well Freerange Stock has come up with a unique revenue sharing solution.
Their website makes money from Google AdSense. And so do their photographers.
When a photographer registers on the website there is shown an option of entering an AdSense ID. Ads connected to this ID will be shown on the website next to the author’s profile page and other pages of the website.
The revenue generated from these ads is credited into the photographer’s AdSense account.
Since these ads are displayed next to the images of the respective author, the more images uploaded, the more ads will be displayed and hence the more money can be made.
Image usage
All Freerange photos are of a very high quality and high resolution, and are individually reviewed to maintain a high quality site. They also have thousands of exclusive images that you won’t be able to find anywhere else and they are regularly adding new photos.
All images on Freerange are copyrighted, but they are licensed for commercial use. This is basically the same way reputed websites like iStockphoto, Fotolia or Shutterstock are doing it – users never “own” an image, but use of the image is allowed under a license. Most stock photos sites sell a royalty-free license to an image, so the image will be legal to use under the terms of the license. Freerange offers a similar royalty-free license, but the cost is $0.
Thousands of blogs, ebooks, videos, websites, businesses, students, schools, non-profits and others currently use their images. They also offer a great selection of high resolution backgrounds and textures. Their database is completely keyword searchable.
However this does not mean you can use the images for every commercial purpose – the right to resell, or to profit from a reprinting of their photos on products like shirts, is a right they reserve for the photographers. This would qualify as redistribution and is not allowed. In fact, stock photography agencies of nearly any kind prohibit this type of practice without a special license.
The website is worth checking out. Take a look and let me know in the comments below what you think of it.
