Planning, shooting, and editing photography for Instagram can take a lot of time (and money!).
Fortunately, there are several creative and diverse stock photography websites available to make life easier.
Read on to discover our top four stock photo websites for finding awesome royalty-free images and videos to use on your Instagram account:
Why Use Stock Photos for Instagram
Stock photos are royalty-free images you can use on Instagram without having to gain permission from the original content creator — and they’re becoming increasingly popular for Instagram marketing.
Long gone are the days of cheesy, generic stock photos. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of creative stock photographers sharing their work through official stock photography sites.
The best part? Stock photos on Instagram can be almost impossible to tell from your in-house content. You can use stock photos when you’ve hit a creative block, don’t have time to shoot photos, or just want to spice up your feed with some fresh content.
When you seamlessly integrate stock photos into your Instagram strategy, you’ll be thanking yourself and saying goodbye to wasted time, money, and energy.
4 of the Best Stock Photo Websites
Whether you’re looking to add engaging visuals to your feed or find creative images for your Instagram Stories, these 5 stock photo websites are a great place to start.
#1: TONL
Diversity and inclusivity should be at the forefront of your marketing on Instagram. If you’re searching for a culturally diverse selection of stock images for Instagram, check out TONL.
TONL aims to transform the idea of stock photography by showcasing images of diverse people and stories from all over the world. As they say on their website, “Photography and storytelling can help humanize and hopefully diminish the stereotypes and prejudice against black and brown people, especially.”
At TONL, you can purchase subscriptions (and cancel at any time) for a relatively low cost.
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#2: Pixabay
Whether you’re looking for stock photos or stock audio for Instagram videos, Pixabay has a collection of over 1.8M free ready-to-use stock assets. From vectors, videos, audio, and photos, Pixabay has it all.
The creative options are endless when it comes to Pixabay’s stock assets. For example, you can download vector images to use as Instagram Stories Highlight covers or use stock video for the background of a post.
The best part about Pixabay is that once you download an asset, you can modify, edit, copy, and distribute the image however you want. The opportunities are endless.
#3: Pexels
For beautifully modern lifestyle stock photos for Instagram (for free!), have a look at Pexels.
You can search for specific keywords or scroll through curated collections on their easy-to-navigate Discover page.
On the Discover page, you’ll also find photos organized by color — a great tool to find on-brand stock photos for your Instagram feed.
#4: Nappy
Just like TONL, Nappy is a stock photo website that provides high-quality diverse and inclusive photos.
From lifestyle to business stock photography, Nappy has a wide range of photos for you to choose from.
All photos on Nappy are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means you can use the photos for whatever you like. You can download, modify, and share — all for free!
In fact, Nappy actually encourages you to use their photos however you’d like. As they outline on their website, “the more you use them, the more we’re helping improve the representation of black and brown people in media.”
Now that you have 5 stock photo websites that are perfect for Instagram, you’re ready to get started!
Using stock photos on Instagram could be the answer to crafting a cohesive feed, without having to blow your budget on expensive shoots.
It’s a quick and easy solution that can help diversify your content and share your brand’s story.
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