Wanting to get my little Stock Photo Watch blog rolling, I wanted to add a little graphic touch to at least the top banner. I wanted to generate something a little different from my own work, and I needed a photo of some eyes. But where to find a reliable source? One of my first search hits was Stock.xchng.com. Billing itself as a stock photography community, the come on was to browse a huge gallery for high quality stock photos. So gave it a click, and lo and behold, it is related to one of my favorite stock sites, Stockxpert.com, a reliable supplier of high quality stock. And Stockxpert is a trusted site of mine.
So why the free photos? And are they any good? The Stock.xchng free stock photo site ties to the regular Stockxpert site, so if you’re not finding what you need in the free group, you can “go premium” and buy from Stockxpert. With regards to quality, well the pickings were a little slim as far as content range, but I was able to select 4 images that I liked, and all the downloads were at generous sizes.
In addition to the blog banner, I also played around for about 5 minutes and generated the nice modern butterfly graphic below.
I haven’t investigated the Stock.xchg site thoroughly, but on brief glance it does indeed look community driven. There is some blogging going on there, and also a Tutorials section. So even f you don’t need any free stock photos, give the free site a try for the valuable info there alone. And maybe you’ll wind up tossing in an image or three. If you’re a contibutor on the regular Stockxpert site, it only helps ensure your own success.
I don’t know how long contributors there keep the free images posted, but I’ll give you the source links for the images I used anyway:
The Dots http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1003459
The Butterfly http://www.sxc.hu/photo/484657
The Ripple http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1003221
Man’s Eyes http://www.sxc.hu/photo/855818
