25 Stylish & Creative Stock Photos to Use on Social Media

Some evergreen subjects include family photoshoots, health and wellness, food, nature, and travel. Of course, there will always be a demand for natural lifestyle, business, and office images. These topics are already well-covered, so finding a unique area or niche within the genre of your choice is your best bet. It can be a local angle on food culture or a new niche within the wellness field, but topic-selling images tend to fill a demand that hasn’t yet been saturated. When you shoot landscape or environmental shots in a new location, find new places and vantage points that differ from the norm.

The secret to getting noticed lies in your titles and metadata, including any relevant keywords you apply to your images. Cultural movements like inclusivity, sustainability, social responsibility, technology, and wellness have also shaped the world of commercial photography. Brands are looking for work that feels unique, inspired, and original, often with a local or personal twist. 500px has model releases and property releases you can print, and popular apps like Releases and Easy Release make it easy to get them signed on-the-go using just a phone or tablet.

Stock Photography Today

These are the moments when you don’t expect magic to happen, but usually it does. For this piece, we will focus primarily on commercial/creative stock photography because it tends to have a larger market and the potential for more sales. Because it can be used to sell or advertise, this kind of stock photography also comes with some added requirements, mostly in the form of model and property releases. The images our contributors create should always be ahead of social, style, technical, and visual trends.

  • Unless you want your post to be comedic, it’s best to steer clear of these types of images, as they can turn a serious topic into a joke quite quickly.
  • That’s where the first stock agencies came in, facilitating the licensing process by bridging the gap between buyers and photographers.
  • Of course, there will always be a demand for natural lifestyle, business, and office images.
  • Whether you need a stock photo, stunning graphic, HD video, or photoshop template, Adobe Stock has the perfect asset to help you tell your story.

The stunning photo is bright and modern, while the cheeky dog is sure to make your viewer smile, ideal for any business working with animals. The DJ in Glowing Costume photo is a bold, neon design, perfect for events, musicians, and artists. The bright glowing costume and high-tech decks could be used across all forms of marketing, including record covers and posters. Multi-Colored Light Trails in Forest is an abstract image featuring a performer amongst forest trees, with beautiful streaming neon light trails. While not suitable for every business or brand, this eye-catching image would suit event organizers or businesses in the creative industries.

What are the different types of stock photography?

Put yourself in the buyers’ shoes; think about what topics or messages they’re interested in illustrating, and then execute them. Good stock photo titles are descriptive and straightforward, and great keywords are thorough and specific. For more visibility, remember to include both literal keywords that describe the subject of the photo and conceptual ones that describe the theme or mood at its center. Accurate titles, descriptions, and keywords help your work surface for the right buyers.

creative stock photography

While most recognizable private buildings will require property releases, creating creative concepts where there are no recognizable traits may still be accepted on our network. best free photo stocks for designers Shoot images of a building in a way that provides a unique, unrecognizable perspective. Read this article for a thorough perspective on shooting architecture from the pros.

Rights-Managed License

Woman In Green Dress features a happy performer skipping across a road in a city setting. The overexposed-style image is bright and saturated with color, ideal for design, fashion, lifestyle, and wellness content. A beautiful example of the common Sunrise Exercise photo trend, this image is ideal for health, wellness, and exercise-based content. The serene and perfectly framed picture is equally eye-catching and reassuring, with large spaces available for text and icon elements. This light and breezy summer picture features a young woman on a cobbled street, holding her partner’s hand as they take the photo. With loads of space for text on the right-hand side, this image is ideal for holiday and travel blogs and posts.