Wanted: The Perfect Background Image

Okay, so you've been working vigorously on editing that new video of yours and suddenly you hit the brick wall that has been staring you in the face. You need some clever background images that will make your project stand out. You could go and take some photos yourself with your camera, but you don't have time for that. You're need high resolution textures and patterns now! Just go to Google and grab some, right? WRONG! You've got copyright issues to deal with, and those can be a big pain. 

As an amateur videographer just starting out, this is one of the hardest things for me to deal with. I don't have an arsenal of high resolution background images in my pocket that I can just whip out and use any time I want in my projects. I have to search and search for hours online before I find something I can use that won't get me in trouble, that's free, and that's moderately what I was looking for. Because of this, I find myself bookmarking websites all the time, so I've decided to share my favorites with you.

Creative Commons-Flickr: First of all if you haven't heard about the Creative Commons movement you should really check it out. Basically under a Creative Commons license users can share their work and others can take it and build upon it, thus creating a "creative commons" where people can benefit from each other. There are different variations of the Creative Commons license so that's really the only thing you need to look out for when considering using a CC photo. Flickr has a great advanced search that let's you look for only Creative Commons photos, taking most of the guess work out of wondering if you can use an image or not.

Freestock.ca: I love this site! The images are free and of really good quality and the site includes photos with Creative Commons licenses, so again, no guessing how or if you can use them. You can even use their photos for commercial purposes as long as you link back to their site and credit the author. Besides background images, there's a lot of cool icon photos that I like to use while designing too. Here's an example of one:

Photo Credit: Nicolas Raymond Freestock.ca

CG Textures: This is a really well organized site that I like to use when I'm looking for textures or even simple photos to make a point in my projects. The images are high resolution and free. CG Textures even has some photos that are already cut out or on transparent backgrounds, so if you're using them in a collage or need to save time, it makes editing them a lot faster and easier.

Lost & Taken: This by far is my favorite site for getting textures and background images for my projects! The images are beautiful and high resolution, so I never have to worry about the image getting too blurry and distorted if I need to use it as a background for a  website or something bigger. In fact, my portfolio site has a Lost & Taken image as the background right now! Overall, Lost & Taken is a wonderful resource and their blog is also a good way to find out about similar freebie sites and creative news.

Unsplash: Someone JUST told me about this, so I haven't had much time to check it out. But it seems like an amazing resource and all the photos are high resolution and gorgeous! They add images every week, so there's always something new to look at. I can't wait to use some of these photos in my upcoming projects (or posts)! 


So there you have it... these are my favorite sites for getting background images easily and quickly without pulling my hair out and spending 5+ hours searching through endless images thinking, "I guess that would work." I know there's probably tons of sites out there that offer similar high resolution background images, but these are my favorites. I hope this helps you in your creative endeavors!