How to Conduct a Stock Image Search

Use Search Engines to Find Stock Photos
Doing a project for your magazine, textbook or travel brochure? I know how important it is to find just the right photo and how stressful it can be as a deadline approaches. I hope this article will enlighten you if you are having trouble finding what you need. As a travel stock photographer I am asked this question quite often by photobuyers and editors so I wrote this little set of tips about how to do  a stock image search you should find useful.

Click to Search All Stock Images by Bob Pardue

If you want to find a royalty free or rights managed picture of just about anything, all you have to do is perform a stock image search on any search engine such as Google and you will have more stock photos than you ever thought possible.

Heed the license information
Deciding what you can do with the photos you find, however, is not always quite as easy. Some use them are for personal use only, and there really isn’t anything wrong with that, as long as the use is legal, of course. However, when it comes to using photos for commercial ventures, you do have to watch what you intend to use the photos for before doing your stock image search.

Stock photographs and copyrights
There are times when I write an article out of my photographic area and I must come up with a photo to go with it. This could easily be done with a simple stock image search. However, I could be in a lot of trouble if I use a photo that has a copyright attached to it, and most of them do.

There are only certain places online where you can find photos that are free to use for whatever you want, and even then, you should make sure that you give the photographer or the site the proper credit. If you are in doubt about what you have found in a stock image search, err on the side of caution and move on to something else.

Don’t take a chance – You don’t have to !
In fact, I would suggest not using them at all as you can find royalty free stock photo agencies such as istock photos where you can buy images for sometimes a dollar or maybe a bit more. Why risk it?

More options for your image search
On the other hand, if you want to pay for the perfect photo or photos for your project, there are many great resources out there, and they all have an image search to help you sort through the thousands of photos they have to offer. You must sign up for these sites, and you do have to pay before you download any of the photographs for your project.

This means the photographer gets paid for their work in the same way that you do. The right picture found in one of these sites can make a huge difference in the success of a project.

Use the right words
When you conduct any type of stock image search, remember to be descriptive, but don’t describe what you want in so much detail that nothing comes up. An image search works in much the same way as a content search does. The photos are labeled with keywords, and if you don’t get the right keywords, the right photo is not going to come up for you.

You may want to start out rather descriptive, and than take away words when nothing good comes up. You will find what you need, but you may need to search a bit to find the right one.

For example: You want a picture of Mount Airy Welcome Sign ..

Wrong Search: “North Carolina images”

Right Search: “Mount Airy welcome sign”

..or, something to that effect. No need to scour thousands of stock pictures when you can narrow the search to a hundred – or less.

Hope this helps the next time you need to do a stock image search for a project or article. These tips for photobuyers don’t show everything an editor needs but will give you a good idea of where to start. Happy searching!!