Best Photo Stock Services & Hacks for Your Business – Everything You Need to Know

To every serious business that thrives on social media, or aims to do so, high-quality images that reflect the values of the company and send the right message are essential, and seemingly hard to acquire. What is equally important – a brand visual identity and website presence – often depend on those same assets.

So the same question pops up during that problem solving: How to get photographs that are worthy of the brand name, and worthy of customers that deserve the best? This is what we will focus on here, we will tell you about the best photo stock services and hacks for your business!

Here on Mountain Moments, we will break down three main ways of getting these perfect photos that build trust:

1. Using stock image platforms, both free and paid 
2. Paying a professional photographer for a specific purpose
3. Taking matters into your own hands and capturing your own images

A list that we created can help you in areas like:

• Social media posts
• Blogs
• Email marketing
• Website design

And much more. 

Businesses, media companies, marketing agencies, and content creators around the world are using these tools, strategies, and services, so let’s see what the first option has to offer.

1. Using Stock Image Platforms

There are many options here, both with free and paid plans, so let’s start breaking this down.

Adobe Stock, a service that offers high-quality and royalty-free goodies like photos, vectors, illustrations, templates, 3D assets, and videos, could be the perfect option if you are using (or plan to use) Photoshop Creative Cloud.

Users of Adobe tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom, enjoy amazingly vast libraries, even in the free-for-commercial-use spectrum. 

Adobe Creative Cloud enables you to keep all your applications and services connected, and one-click “licensing” of the image on Adobe Stock immediately sends it to your app’s library, where you can continue with your editing. 

The best thing is – the “Free” option in the search box will isolate the images that you don’t have to pay a single penny for or spend any of your licenses on!

The assets are available in millions, and in the sphere of paid items, you can find anything you need with credit packs and subscriptions that start with 29.99/mo. Learn more about plans here.

If you are looking for Free images on the web independent of Adobe, some of the most popular destinations are:

Pixabay: Awesome place not only for photos, vectors, and illustrations but for videos and music as well.

Unsplash: This is another bookmark-worthy link, full of great images that are free to use without permissions or attribution. 

Not finding what you need? Do not stress, because even though some images are shared between these websites, many are available on only one location, so other options like Stock Snap, Canva, and Pexels are also very important to keep in mind!

What are some of the paid stock photo websites and how much do they charge? 

There are many options, but of course, since more luxurious stock photo services have their price, most choose to rely on only one.

Variety-wise, Canva Pro is a perfect solution for many, especially for those that are not Photoshop-savvy. 

Why? Canva doesn’t just have 100+ million premium photos, videos, and graphics, but it also serves as an actual canvas, where you can create your own work with the help of 600.000+ templates!

Possibilities seem endless, and for 11.99 Euros (at the time of this writing), you can have full access and a schedule option for 8 social media platforms.

Another useful tool at our disposal that has a rich and handy interface is Shutterstock. It has Shutterstock Custom, a custom creating tool, and Offset, an “authentic, captivating, royalty-free stock photography and illustrations”. 

It’s also compatible with Adobe Creative Cloud apps, which makes your work easier and almost seamless. Check out the Shutterstock pricing here.

There are so many other options worthy of considering, with their own advantages and useful features. 

Deposit Photos has a free image library and also paid plan that goes as low as 89 cents per image, while 123RF website has On-Demand Credits for short-term use and subscription plans for those in need of long-term solutions.

2. Paying a Professional Photographer

There are plenty of reasons for considering hiring a professional photographer, especially if you don’t have photography experience or a proper camera.

This service can be pricey, but if you need specific images for your website, printed material, or social media, nothing gives a nicer note of professionalism and greater social media shareability than images that are taken right – and post-produced well.

In the right hands, professionally taken images demonstrate the credibility of your company, and they build up trust.

What to look out for when hiring a photographer? To get the biggest bang for your buck, make sure you:

• Conduct a detailed interview to see if the photographer’s niche and style fits your needs, and to see if you are on the same wavelength
• Ask for a portfolio of his or her work
• Talk with different photographers to compare prices
• Make sure to explain your requirements well, and ask about the post-production process

Keep in mind that the post-production part can take up most of the time, so take that into consideration when reviewing numbers. 

Useful tip: With a good conversation, you will know if the person is right for the job and if the chemistry is there. Also, if someone you know already has good experience with certain photographers, that could be worth considering right off the bat.

What is the price span? Professional photographs charge anywhere from 500 to 3000$ daily. Of course, this depends on a lot of factors, like the type and the number of images you require, and the level of professionalism of the person doing the job.

Important:  Watch out for smaller prices. You can get a bang for the buck – or even a free shooting from an uprising young photographer – but the outcome is uncertain. Professional photographers usually have their price for a reason. Compare their previous work on similar projects.

Let’s talk about the third option now.

3. Capturing Your Own Images

Are you considering taking the matter into your own hands? Set-up, angles, framing, and post-production are all crucial parts of taking photos, so if you are going to do this yourself, do it right.

You don’t even need s professional DSLR camera, as many mobile phones do a great job these days. 

Here are some useful tips for anyone who is considering this option:

• For product photography, isolate the object and give it proper lighting. Consider using small, foldable lightboxes, that take care of both. It’s a one-time investment.
• If you don’t have tools like Photoshop or Lightroom for retouching and color-correcting, search for free tools or apps online.
• Internet is full of free tutorials that for any purpose you can imagine, so after a few hours of Youtubing, you can upgrade your knowledge greatly.
• If you need to learn more about this subject, you can take online courses on sites like Skillshare, Coursera, and Udemy, or on completely free course-providing sites like Alison.com (certificates and diplomas included).

Our best tip, we give to all companies: learn how to make great pictures yourself. Get to know our Business Workshop –  we teach companies how to make great visuals for themselves. No need to hire a photographer every time – your smartphone is enough. Learn how to make such beautiful pictures for your business yourself in our Social Media Photography Business Workshop.

Compelling images are vital to your business – in this workshop you take the fast lane: in a few hours, we save you lots of learning time – one or two days intense learning can get you ahead of your competition.

Useful tip: GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a popular free photo editor that takes some time to learn, but is well worth it, while to some, free mobile/tablet versions of Adobe tools (Adobe Lightroom Mobile) or even for standard editing do the trick.

Conclusion! 

Every business has a steady, rising trajectory of growth as a goal, and that includes making smart choices within a budget. A smart thing to do that aligns with that goal is choosing the right image providers, because with the right visual identity and messaging, we built trust in the people our company depends on.

Luckily, today we have a lot of tools at our disposal and ready-to-use assets that fit any topic. We also have an easy way of searching for these images, which saves time, and we can enjoy interactive and customizable interfaces and daily-updated libraries.

Here at Mountain Moments, we rely on traveling and on our own DSLR and phone cameras, but most businesses cannot put their focus on that area. This is why it’s crucial to make the proper use of the gifts that are ready and free for taking, but unknown to many. If you want to learn within your business to make good pictures on a daily basis for your Social Media use, you can learn that in our Social Media Photography Business Workshop.