Since 2003, I've done digital marketing and built hundreds of websites for big brands and small businesses in Chicago. Without any doubt, the most time consuming part of building each website was finding photos. If you've ever built a website, you know what I'm talking about.
The process is a seemingly endless search of free photos that will fit perfectly on our customer's website, blog, or social media page. It's insanely time consuming and very frustrating.
As you know, you have to be super careful. Photography trolls are everywhere, and just waiting for you to accidentally use the wrong photo so they can threaten you with a lawsuit, unless you pay thousands of dollars for using the photo.
That actually happened to me twice. Those people are ruthless. They never give up until you pay something. From what I can remember, I ended up paying about $1,000 for one photo, and $800 for another. This was negotiated down, of course. They originally demanded about $5,000 each.
To help everyone out, I’ve listed 10 of my favorite places to get totally free stock photos of Chicago. The free photos on these websites fall under public domain, or under CC0 (Creative Common Zero). This means that anyone can use the photo for any reason, including a blogs, websites, and social media pages.
Anytime you need free stock photos of Chicago, refer to this blog post, and you won’t have to worry about licenses and photo trolls.
Download the free checklist -10 Sites with Totally Free Stock Photos of Chicago.
1. Unsplash
179 brilliant photos Chicago, using high quality filters that I’m sure you’ll love. This site is by far my favorite. I use this site regularly, and so do other people all over the world.
2. Barn Images
Wow! I was recently very impressed with all the new Chicago photos on this site. There’s only 19, but 19 pretty good ones. Nice work guys. Check this out and save for your searches.
A new collection of free photos in Chicago. This collection has been growing and growing. Worth bookmarking and sifting through each week as they grow,
4. Pixabay
As of right now, they have 544+ photos of Chicago that will be perfect for your website or blog. Download and enjoy.
A decent collection of Chicago photos, but mostly skylines and the Bean. However, they are very clean and high quality. One of them could be perfect for your next blog or social media post.
A very small but decent collection of free Chicago photos. Mainly skylines. Worth a quick gander.
7. Free Range
60 solid photos of Chicago that are totally free for you to download an use. Lots of goodies here. Be sure to check this site out.
8. ABS Free Pic
A big collection of free Chicago photos. Nothing spectacular, but worth looking through each time you need a free photo of Chicago.
9. Good Stock
A Small collection of Chicago photos. Nothing great. Nothing bad. However, worth checking out and keeping on your list.
A really interesting collection of public domain photos of Chicago that are free for you to use in any way. I was pleasantly surprised with this site. Lots of older and newer photos of Chicago, broken down into different articles. You really must check this out!
Final thoughts…
I highly recommend using these amazing websites, but please note that I cannot personally vouch for them. I don’t know the owners. I don’t know and won’t know if they ever change their license agreements. All I can tell you is that I personally use these sites for free stock photos all the time, and so do millions of other people.
Download the free checklist -10 Sites with Totally Free Stock Photos of Chicago.
Enjoy and freely use them however you wish, but please do your own homework and stay up-to-date with their terms.
Always look for “CC0” or “public domain” and you should be good and safe.
Always look for “CC0” or “public domain” and you should be good and safe.
Enjoy!
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