I’ve been on the lookout for a place to find free blog pictures, and it looks like I may have found something that works for me. While I’ve found other services that offer blog pictures, every other service I’ve found has had some kind of fee or restriction.
Acobox allows you to choose from a wide variety of images (there are lots of images, but I would still like to see more added to certain categories, especially the abstract and technology categories).
Acobox also takes care of the licensing and other unsavoury issues so that all you need to do is select an image, copy the code, and paste it into your post. You don’t even need to host the image yourself, Acobox hosts the image for you.
I’ve included an image in this post so you can get an idea of the quality of the images hosted on the service (yes, I know, a radio observatory doesn’t really have anything to do with this post, but I thought it was a pretty cool photo).
Acobox also allows you to submit your own photos, which can be used by other members under a variety of licenses. I think this is a great idea — it builds a community around free photo sharing for the purposes of blogging, which benefits both contributors (who can use others’ photos) and members (who get to use everyone’s photos). I may just have to contribute a few photos myself.
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November 20th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Have you considered using images from Flickr? Right now, there are over 10 million photos free to use as long as the photographer is given attribution.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:25 am
I’ve used some photos from Flickr before, and you’re right, there are countless photos you can use — the only issue I’ve come across with Flickr photos is that I’ve had a tough time finding abstract or generic images (‘clipart’ kind of stuff). But Flickr’s definitely another great source (if not the best source) for finding photos.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:34 am
As you may have noticed, I’ve removed the image from this post — since it’s been failing to load! While I was initially quite happy with the performance of this site, I’ve since been rather unimpressed with their uptime — so as Greg has suggested, you’re probably better off using Flickr.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:56 am
I did two searches on acobox with keywords related to my blog and the only response was that there were no pictures matching the keywords.
So for me it definitely does NOT work.
January 13th, 2009 at 2:56 am
I’m surprised there aren’t more sites with free images, possibly supported by ads on the site (not in the images). Such a site could be very popular.
January 19th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
While such a site could be popular, I think Greg’s point about using Flickr is an important one — why even put up with ads when you can go to Flickr get what you need for free (without ads too)?
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The thing with Flickr is that it is set up for you to take your own pictures and then host them on their website. Flickr probably would not like if you uploaded third party pictures or pictures from other websites for free hosting.
I’ve used publicdomainpictures.net but I haven’t directly linked to their pictures. I went to the site and downloaded a picture and then re-uploaded the picture to my site. It may be possible to link directly to the pictures; it depends if they allow it.