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Comment by gk1 | Hacker News Reader

A surprisingly good list. I expected the usual CC galleries on Flickr or elsewhere, or Getty Images' new (and free) embedding option.

As mentioned by someone else, I don't get the "photos sent to you weekly/monthly" sites. Why? I can't picture (har har) someone needing a photo for some design, but thinking "Welp, nothing good on the web... I'll wait to see what comes along next week." Unless it's just aimed at photography enthusiasts who enjoy seeing beautiful photos, with no intent to use them for something.

I'll also add that if you're looking to add photos to your content, consider being different and using a funny cartoon drawing instead, like Jason Cohen, 42Floors, and others have been doing. Here's a stock cartoon site I created just for that purpose: https://www.gagcartoons.com

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Totally agree about the weekly emails. Unless I was using stock photography all the time (in which case I'm less likely to need the free ones) this would be no use. I was searching urgently for a good free stock photo a while ago and these sites just made me screw my face up.

To make matters worse, there doesn't even appear to be any way to get the back-catalogue of most of these sites. Death to Stock gives you a collection of photos when you sign up, but it's just 10 sample images.

Very confusing.

Probably the avenue for monetization would be access to the back catalogues. Which in turn eliminates the free part of free stock photography.

While this may seem ludicrous (eliminating the appeal of your free stock photos over paid ones) this is common practice after a series of emails looking to elaborate on this point with a few of the services.

The whole thing seems a bit flimsy to me though: (1) Don't provide free stock photos at the time that people want them. (2) Later doe provide stock photos at the time that people want them, but no longer for free. (3) Profit!

Interestingly, this business model incentivizes subscribing to every such website's mailing list you see on the off chance you might need the photos later.

Bloggers. I use photos every day for my blog (usually screen shots I take myself, or Flickr cc) but getting free stock photos emailed to me weekly is an interesting alternative. I've signed up for a couple of these sites based on this list. Thanks to the OP.

The thing about creative inspiration is that you never know where it might come from. Having a little random piece of beauty fall into your lap when you aren't expecting it could be just the thing to make an unusual connection in your brain.

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