I’ll be the first to tell you, I’m no professional photographer and I’ll never become one. Photography (especially fashion, glamour, business, and commercial) requires a significant investment in equipment and even a studio depending on the subject. It isn’t something I recommend you attempt to do with a point and shoot digital camera that you buy at Costco.
Now if you’re like me and budget aware, the best solution you can ever hope to use that isn’t quite free but budget sensitive is royalty free stock photography from Dreamstime. You can register for free and access literally millions of high-resolution stock images for sometimes as low as 20 cents, depending on how many credits you buy when you first sign-up.
Even if you have graphic design experience like I do, it’s not cost effective to spend hours on end illustrating one image when you’ve got like 10 more to do to finally have enough images for your website. When I was building my own website (the one you’re looking at right now), almost every single image I ended up using was sourced from Dreamstime (enhanced in Photoshop by yours truly).
I can’t even imagine how long it might’ve taken me to illustrate all the images myself, taking into consideration that I also have to run my business and work on my clients’ stuff. Forever sounds like a good ballpark figure. You know what the best part about stock images is: they’re usually available in a couple different file formats varying from JPG, RAW and even vector!
