Pros and Cons of Stock Images
If you are a photographer, artist or fashion brand that relies on visuals you probably have an over abundance of your own images to choose from.
But what if you don't have your own images. I mean I love my dentist but if he asked to take a photo of my dental cleaning that would be a hard "no". So what do you do? You could take a minimalist approach and use color or graphics but often times we rely on images to help tell our story.
This is where the PRO to stock photos comes in. I use them. I love them. I happily spend hours creating a visual story for clients when they don't have their own images and best of all many of them are free to use without attribution (though it's always nice to credit the artists whenever possible).
Below are a few of my go-to sources:
So what's the CON? When you are sourcing these fabulous images, keep two things in mind.
The name of the photo. If you source an image from one of these sites the url links to the site. Okay, okay, I just preached about link building but it's a bit different here and is considered a re-direct as it sees a link from another source, validates it then continues loading your site. This creates a few seconds delay in loading your site which can negatively affect site speed and SEO.
The second thing to be aware of is the image size. Sometimes you can choose the size of the image you download, other times it is defaulted to the largest format, up to 4000 pixels in some cases. This size is great for print but WAY TOO large for web.
The solution:
Once you have downloaded the image(s), rename the file to something that makes more sense for you. For example: coaching-services-banner.jpg.
Next re-size the image. If you are on a Mac, this can be done in image preview. Bonus points if you compress the image using a tool like tinypng.com.
Taking the time to do these two extra steps will improve your site speed and SEO. And of course, you have beautiful images which is the goal.
