A Useful Guide to Free Photos, Media & More

UNSPLASH

UNSPLASH

www.unsplash.com

Unsplash is filled with "Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos." It's a project curated by Crew, a Montreal company founded in 2012 with the mission "to change the way digital products are built."

According to its website, the Crew company, "... connects people working on projects with hand-picked, screened creative professionals in the mobile and web industry. The goal of Crew is to ensure that the right project finds the hands of the right professional, every single time." 

The Crew team, "knew there was a better way for freelancers and businesses to work together—one that values quality over rock-bottom prices, where trust is a given, and creativity is the native currency."

Crew's marketing manifesto is to be generous and then be rewarded, which is my creed, as well. They're a product of the permission marketing mindset and one way Crew is generous is to collect and share gorgeous photos from the Public Domain through a lab called Unsplash.

If you sign up for Unsplash, Crew will send you 10 new free stock photos every 10 days. Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

But I love Crew's Unsplash Instant application, which makes the wait for 10 photos obsolete. If you're using the Chrome Browser, you can download the Unsplash Instant app extension and every time you open a new Tab in your Chrome Browser, the screen is adorned with a beautiful photo and the photographer's name, which is linked to that person's Unsplash gallery page. You can download that photo, you can "like" it, you can share it on Facebook or Twitter, or you can go to the Unsplash homepage and view other photos.

All of these hyperlinks are elegantly tucked away into corners of the photo, which is often so breathtaking you might forget why you opened the tab in the first place. I recommend hesitating when you open a new tab and take a moment to admire, and perhaps click the heart icon to "like" the image.

You can view photos on Unsplash as either a Grid, or a large gallery. You can search by keyword, and you can even create an account and "save" photos in collections.

It's a wonderful resource, and it's become my "Go-To" for images above all others. The reason for this is simple: These photos are beautiful.