If you’ve got a blog, you probably already know that you can’t legally grab any images you find online and use them. That could get you into a heap of trouble and possibly make enemies of bloggers or anyone else you steal photos from.
Fortunately, you can easily find free stock photos at sites such as Pexels, MorgueFile, Pixabay, and RGBStock. As part of my plan to make over and upgrade LivingWithBeth this year, I’ve subscribed to a low-cost stock photos site called GraphicStock.
However, when I need celebrity pics like I did for this post about famous people’s distant relationships to British royalty, free stock photo websites and even GraphicStock usually don’t have what I need. Instead, I turn to Getty Images.
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Getty Images? Wait – isn’t that the premium, high-priced photo service only large media companies can afford? Getty Images does indeed charge several hundred dollars or more per image if you want to buy one.
Here’s the great thing, though – they now let bloggers use their photos for free as long as you embed them rather than download them and then upload them to your blog.
Embedding an image means that the image stays where it is – on Getty Images servers – while your blog points to the image and shows it. Here’s how it’s done.
- Click here and enter what you’re looking for in the search box. I’m going to search for pictures of George Clooney. If you’re a woman, you may have noticed that pictures of George Clooney are nice to look at.
- Hover over an image and click the Embed this Image option, which looks like this: </>.
- Copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post. To copy the text, click inside the box to highlight the text, then hit Ctrl+C.
- In WordPress, you’ll need to select the Text tab to paste HTML code, using the Ctrl+V paste command.
When Can’t You Use Free Embedded Getty Images?
You can’t use Getty Images for free outside of the embed function described above. This means that you can’t download a picture from Getty Images for free and legally use it to make a Pinterest graphic.
Also, you can’t use free embedded Getty Images in advertising or any type of promotion, or in any post that’s defamatory, pornographic, or illegal. Each picture also might have its own stated restrictions on the image details page.
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