When I started helping people with their websites I often struggled to find the right photos to make an interesting design. Getting photos from an agency wasn’t really an alternative because they cost too much. But then I cooperated with a webdesginer to realize the website for the Norwegian publishing company Fabula and got introduced to Fotolia.
Fotolia turned out to be a very good resource for royalty free photos that cost almost nothing. Btw. you cannot only buy photos there but also sell yours (as long as they match their quality criteria).
But back to buying photos:
You register an account and buy credits (1 credit = 0.83 euros). Once you have found a photo you want to download, you can chose different sizes for different prizes (starting from 1 credit!).
If you’re not sure about buying this photo yet, you can add it to your lightbox (personal bookmarks) to find it again. Searching for a photo (or illustration) can be done by tags, subject related galleries, categories, by type of image (photo, illustration, vector or isolated) or size.
Once you have decided to buy one you can get them by email or direct download. All that is left to do then for you is to use the photo and credit the photographer and fotolia of course. You will get the instructions for it with your photo.
That’s how I have found the background picture for my private website (that is also used in the blog there and on my twitter account) as well as the grass photo used here and on my agency website (credits can be found on the contact pages).
What do you think about such a service? And where do you get your photos from?
