Great pictures, graphics and videos can give strong impact to your web site, but you need to make sure you have all the rights to any images that are published.
In some cases there are several “rights holders” to an image.
You can’t just copy an image from instagram you like, or some other place and use that. I’ve seen people get in trouble when using a picture from one of their suppliers – people they pay every month – when they tried to use an image without permissions.
In some cases a supplier won’t even have the right to give you rights to re-publish.
When a photo is taken, the photographer has rights to the image, but it does not end there.
The photographer needs to get a model release from any people in the photo that establishes what rights are transferred and under what conditions.
I’ve also seen situations where you need to get rights from a property owner – you might think taking a picture of a barn is harmless – but if you publish such a picture without the rights of the property owner, it could cause trouble.
So you could be the photographer, or hire someone to take photos for you – and you;ll need to get a signed “photographer’s release” in order to publish pics on your web site.
This is similar if you were to hire an artist to design graphics for you, you need a signed rights release.
If there are people in the photo – you need a release of rights from them as well.
If the location / background is special, you may need a release from the property owner as well.
You can skip all the rights agreements and model releases if you use ‘stock photos’ from many places that give a blanket ‘right to re-use / republish’ when you use them.
There are several places to get free pictures and graphics that have no restrictions on use, places like:
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/commercial-use
https://www.pexels.com/royalty-free-images/
There are premium places that have stock photos you can browse and pay to use such as:
https://elements.envato.com/photos
https://stock.adobe.com/premium
https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/premium
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/premium-stock-photography
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/premium
There is also this place:
https://wordpress.org/openverse/
( aka https://creativecommons.org/ )
that “automattic”, the owners of wordpress.com bought (I think! see: https://wptavern.com/podcast/10-whats-in-wordpress-5-9-and-what-is-openverse) and made available to the public, which has listings for thousands of freely available / free to use commercially, pictures and graphics.
Interestingly they also acquired this neat graphic making thing that is being embedded into a suite of social media tools to enhance the premium jetpack offering. If you do a lot of social stuff, it might be worth the $600 per year to get the premium jetpack and all it’s tools.
Great pics are everywhere, just make sure the ones you use don’t get you into trouble.
There is also some great discussion about what happens when several places use the same stock image – this is especially funny with a particular “call center girl” where hundreds of places seem to have the same girl waiting by the phone for customer support and sales. So keep in mind that stock photos are great for convenience, but custom photography is often the best for many reasons. Just make sure you have the release rights on paper.