Sourcing diverse and inclusive images for your site

Photo by Michael Poley for AllGo

One of the most common struggles experienced by comms professionals, is finding the perfect stock image photo to illustrate your content. And if you are looking for diverse and inclusive photos the struggle is very real.

Free image sites like Unsplash and Pexels have come a long way from producing the usual standard and cheesy imagery, but it can still be hard work to find photos that are representative, for example, of people of colour, LGBTQ+, or plus-size people. And when such images are available, they're usually stereotyped and/or outdated.

Recently while working with a client to improve their stock photo library and the quality of the images used on their website, I did some research and compiled a list of sites I've found to have good quality, diverse and inclusive imagery.

1. WOCinTech This Flickr site depicts women of colour in the office environment. The images are very natural and positive. Photos from this site are also available on Unsplash, and are on a Creative Commons Attribution License, which means you can copy, distribute and display the images so long as you attribute #WOCinTech or wocintechchat.com.
   

2. The Gender Spectrum Collection This site features images of trans and non-binary models to help media better represent the members of these communities as people with careers, relationships, talents, passions and home lives. Images are made available through a Creative Commons license, and content creators are encouraged to use widely and responsibly.
   

3. Nappy Nappy exclusively features Black and brown people doing everyday things, like making coffee, going to work, socialising and generally having a time that's good. All the photos are under a Creative Commons Zero license, which means you can download, modify, share, distribute images for free.
   

4. CreateHER Stock This is a subscription-based photo library of images featuring women of colour, created specifically for bloggers, content marketers, designers and other creative professionals. There are some freebies images available to give you a taster of what you could get if you subscribe.
   

5. AllGo I found this site through Unsplash and it's definitely worth a look. Allgo is actually a tech company focused on serving the needs of plus-size people/ They created their image collection primarily for their Instagram account but also to increase the representation of plus-size people in all their diversity. While attribution is not required to use the photos, they do ask that AllGo and photographer Michael Poley of Poley Creative are credited.
   

This list is by no means definitive, so if you know of any other sites that have quality, diverse and inclusive imagery, or maybe you own one, please do mention in the comments. In the meantime happy image sourcing!