Don't want to get arrested? Great, me either. You may have noticed there are a ton of articles floating around the web lately talking about "stealing images off of Google" and how you can get into some serious legal trouble by doing so. I'll admit, I've been guilty of snagging images and meme's off of Google image search from time to time for blogs, websites or simply trolling on Facebook. That being said, I've compiled a list of different places to get free use images that you can use for your website, blog or anywhere else without paying a dime.
Any good blogger or SEO enthusiast will tell you that it's critical to have images on your blog to spice up your articles, draw the reader's attention in and to boost your chances of showing up in Google results. All of that is great, but if the images you decided to use were obtained illegally, you may end up with a great looking blog that caused you several thousand dollars worth of fines.
5 Places to Get Free Images for Your Blogs
The websites that you'll find below offer tons of great photos, many of which are professionally photographed and edited (depending on the site you use). Some of these website you'll have to sign up to use, and some even offer high-quality premium images with a price tag, but all have free photos available that you can use for whatever your heart desires.
Flickr
Flickr may not be your first choice or even the best choice, but you can get free images for just about any category you could ever want. Be careful though, they do give photo authors the option to turn off downloading.
Stock.xchng
Stock.xchng requires that you register to use their photos, but once you do, you get plenty to choose from. In addition to their free images they also have a wide range of premium paid images to choose from.
Morgue File
Aside from it's seemingly gruesome name, Morgue File has some incredible free images to choose from. From the little bit of digging that I did, I found that some of this artwork is worth framing and hanging on your wall.
Microsoft Images
Believe it or not, this website is more than just generic wallpapers for your Windows PC. Microsoft's image gallery has a great collection of free images that you can use for your blog or website that look awesome!
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images
RBG Stock
When I came across this site, I immediately noticed the quality of the photography available and free images available for use. While there are some "low skill" shots on this site as with others, there are some incredible pieces as well. This site does require you to register in order to download.