Dreamstime is among my top sites for free and premium stock photography. Searching for the right stock photos has been a struggle year after year for me. I’d love to use only my own photos but there are two problems with this: 1) I am not good at photography and 2) Sometimes I am posting about something I don’t have a photo of or couldn’t take a photo of. Stock photos come in handy at these times.
© Leigh Prather | Dreamstime.com
Free or Premium Stock Photography
I’ve tried the sites that are purely free and while you can sometimes find some good images, let’s face it, it’s just not the same quality. Dreamstime is not cheap but that’s because the quality of it’s photographs are outstanding and the site is easy to use. I have not found a single image on the site I didn’t like or that wasn’t good quality. There is a free section as well which has some pretty good images.
If you are looking to purchase premium photography, there are multiple options depending on what you would like to be able to do.
Credit Packages
If you are looking to buy a few photos for upcoming projects you can purchase credits and use those credits to download the images. For example you can buy 11 credits for $16.85 CAD which allows you to download up to 11 images. It says up to because a photo is not always worth one credit. Looking around I found most were 3-5 credits for the SMALLEST size and 9-11 credits for the LARGEST size. You can buy credit packages from 11 up to 2000+. The benefit of the credit packages is that they do not expire for a year so you can use the credits over a long period of time.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions are a larger amount of money upfront but allow you to download a LARGE number of images during a certain period of time. For example a 1 month subscription at 25 downloads a day is $245 CAD BUT you can download up to 25 photos a day for each day in the month for maximum possible 750 images. In this case you would mass download images that fit the topics of your website/blog that you might find use for in the future and then you can back them up on disc for future usage. With a subscription, you can download your images in ANY size.
Are You a Photographer?
If unlike me you take good photography and don’t make much use of stock photography sites, then consider selling your photos to Dreamstime and make money off of them!
*Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I received a complimentary subscription to review the site. All opinions are honest and mine.
Rebekah
Sunday 29th of December 2013
I have a photographer account at Dreamstime (and at several other stock sites). My portfolio's not huge, but it does bring in a little bit of extra money. It's a nice way to earn a small residual income.
springmount6pack
Sunday 29th of December 2013
This is perfect. Sometimes I need a picture and can not get it right or just do not have time to take it myself.
Nancy StyleDecor
Sunday 29th of December 2013
Ooooh...I have to check this out. I'm not the best photographer, but I do have some photos I took that I think are kinda special... Thanks! :)
@misteedawnw
Sunday 29th of December 2013
Never heard of them. Sounds like a great site, though. Thanks so much for the info.
@SweepTight
Sunday 29th of December 2013
I didn't know about this. What a great resource! I just started learning more about photography so hopefully I can sell some one day!!