How to find stock photos that don't suck for your website

Key quotes:

• "Dear Ueno is an advice column for people who for some weird reason think we know what we’re doing."
• "From Aman Chaudhary, a 19-year-old designer: “I’m willing to pay for good photos."
• "Where can I find good photos for my projects that are not phony?” Robin Noguier, designer at Ueno San Francisco, says: When we need photos, we just ask our dear in-house photographer Troy Stains to take them for us."
• "Sometimes we do need to spend countless hours looking for the perfect photo in an ocean of weird stock photographs."
• "There isn’t any magical solution: to find good photos that will really match your project, you’ll have to spend time browsing thousands of them until you look like this: Please avoid the common mistake: the stock photos that look staged and cheesy! (Basically any picture in this article.) If you need multiple photos for your project, make sure the lighting and the style is similar across all of them."
• "You might be using stock photos, but you don’t want people to know you’re using stock photos."

Key quotes:

• "Let’s walkthrough a quick hypothetical here: You’re finishing up a blog post about, say, “The Best FREE Stock Image Sites for All Situations [2016]” and you realize that it stinks there’s a lot left to be desired."
• "These laws depend on the way in which you acquire content: There are loads of lists out there telling you the 17 best stock image sites, or the ultimate list of free stock images for your blog, but oftentimes, the lines are blurred between attribution and not."
• "Attribution, in the context of copyright law under Creative Commons, is simply the proper accreditation of a work to the copyright holder."
• "Attribution-free photos, however, allow you to alter, post, print, and share images as long as you do not claim original ownership in any way."
• "[To learn more about licensing, fair use, and attribution, check out the Creative Commons website — a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creative materials within the law.] NOW."

Key quotes:

• "You’re left with either low-res amateur photos, people wearing cheesy headsets, or photos that are out of budget for the project you’re working on."
• "Below is an ongoing list (so bookmark it) of the best stock photo sites I’ve come across."
• "Update: I’ve created a Mac App and Chrome Extension to deliver you hand-picked, gorgeous images as your desktop wallpaper every day."
• "You should download it, it’s free: Download Wallcat for Mac or Download Wallcat for Chrome Know of any other great sites? Leave a note here and I’ll add it to the list."

Key quotes:

• "There are plenty of articles and blogs that list amazing resources on where to find quality stock photos, but I want to talk about how to put those stock photos to best use on your next project."
• "Ok this may be an obvious tip, but what I mean by this is to use stock photos that don’t look like stock photos."
• "I want an image that shows a business event with people."
• "Here are the results: This is a fairly simple example, but it shows how much faster you can pull relevant results just by being more specific in your searches."
• "Every stock photo website is different, so they may have more advanced filters you can use, but the idea is the same."
• "Just because you can’t use the whole photo, doesn’t mean you need to throw it out."