For food writers, finding the perfect image that captures what you’re writing about can be tough. So, where do you go for food photography when you can’t shoot what you need? I’ve compiled a list of 15 high quality photography and image sites that have fabulous food images that can be used for any purpose. There’s a screenshot of the food categories so you can see for yourself what images the site has, a brief note of what the site is about and why the food and drink photos on the site are great.

Unsplash

Unsplash is a great place for high quality images of any category. Their front page shows a Photo of the Day, and the top navigational bar makes it easy to look for a photo in a particular category. It’s one of my favorite places for high quality background images. Their license gives the user access to the photos for commercial and noncommercial purposes.

Food and drink pics: A great selection of high quality food and drink pictures – from ingredients to finished plates to restaurant dining pictures. Lots of outdoor and restaurant food pictures. Check the collections for themed food images.

Pexels

Pexels is another popular image resource with photography toward the professional side. They have a “trending” and “new” photos so you can easily see what is popular and what the latest uploads are. Their Explore page has collections for popular image collections by theme, the most viewed photos from the last 30 days, and who the most viewed photographers are within the last 30 days. If you are thinking why a photographer would give away high quality photos for free, one recent check on the leaderboard showed a photographer getting 9.56 million views within the last 30 days, which equal lots of exposure. Their license allows the user to use the images in any way.

Food and drink pics: Pexels has a wonderful selection of high quality images from studio works and kitchen action and plated shots. Another site with lots of outdoor and restaurant pictures. You have the option of downloading a small, medium, large, original size, or custom size image. Check the collections for themed food images.

Pixabay

Pixabay is site with free photos, illustrations, vectors and stock video clips. All content is released under the Pixabay license which allows the user to use content in any manner including commercial.

Food and drink: There is a very large selection of all kinds of food images including backgrounds and wallpaper images. All pictures can be searched by orientation, category, size, and color. Unlike other image sites, you’ll also find food vector graphics and illustrations. For food video options, you can search by effects (animation, slow motion, time lapse) and resolution (any size, HD, 4K).

Burst

Burst is an image site that’s powered by Shopify. Photos are available under their nonexclusive license giving the user the ability to use the photos for commercial and noncommercial purposes whether the images are used in a Shopify shop or not.

Food and drink pics: While there’s less overall food pictures than on some other image sites, the food images here are high quality with lots of action shots. For each picture you have the option of downloading a high or low resolution version.

Canva

Canva is an online design company that features templates and drag-and-drop tools to create print and web media graphics. While the main site focuses on that, they do have a large selection of images you can use for any purpose. Images can be download as Premium or Free – the free images can be used downloaded and used anywhere with no attribution required, but check the image source for each one you download. On the license page, it states to check the image source (the images come from different sources) such as Pixabay pictures are covered by the Pixabay license and Pexels pictures are covered by the Pexels license.

Food and drink pics: The images here are high quality and you can further narrow down your search by keyword. If you have a Canva account, you can use the picture you like directly in their interface if you’re logged in.

Foodiesfeed

Foodiesfeed features only pictures that are food related. You can view pictures by popular tags, latest or trending pictures, and selected categories at the top of the page. All images are available with a CC0 license.

Food and drink pics: While there are fewer pictures here on the entire Foodiesfeed site that on other sites’ food section categories, this site focuses only on food and drink so you’ll never get anything in a search other than a food pic.

Kaboompics

Kaboompics is a photography site with different search choices: either free photos or free photshoots. For example. “Delicious Italian food from the Amalfi Coast” photoshoot has over 40 different photos of a seafood dinner with different plates and angles so if you like a how one photo looks you can see if it is inside a photoshoot for other images. What’s unique about this site is you can find images with a certain color palette – a HEX color palette is automatically generated from each picture, and you can download this as well.

Food and drink pics: Kaboompics has many unique food photos, and all are high quality. Each picture can be downloaded as original, medium or custom size. The photoshoot feature helps you find just the right angle if you happen to really like a photo but need a different angle. All images here are not made available to other sites, so they are unique.

Freeimages

Freeimages is a very big site with lots of pictures to choose from. They have a Collections menu at the top making finding a certain category easy, as well as a quick way to find the latest images and editor’s picks. While the images are free under their license and attribution isn’t required for commercial usage, attribution is required for editorial use.

Food and drink pics: This site has a lot food pictures from studio work and clip art ingredients. For each image, you have the option of downloading a small, medium, large, XL, or full resolution version of the picture.

Reshot

Reshot photos are available under the Reshot license: free to use for both commercial and noncommercial purposes. The images are high quality, and if you are looking for a unique photo for your site this will probably have it.

Food and drink pics: Lots of unique food pictures – and food and drink pictures with people in action, like cooking, eating, and working in the kitchen.

Morguefile

Morguefile offers free high resolution images for private or commercial use. The site states the name Morguefile gets its name from the term “morgue file” – a storage place for post-production materials that can be accessed at any time.

Food and drink pics: There’s a large selection of food pictures to choose from and I’ve used this site a lot in the past (many years ago there weren’t as many places for free pictures as there are now) – and I’ve noticed that over the years as the site has grown, so has the quality of the images being uploaded.

Stocksnap.io

StockSnap is a site with CC0 license images, and the images can be searched by date, tag, or trending. There is a certain criteria that must be met before uploading images making them unique and high quality.

Food and drink pics: More ingredient pictures than plated or action food shots here. The food pictures are great and many are bright using natural light. You’ll find indoor and outdoor food pictures.

Stockvault

Stockvault has images, textures and illustrations available for download via a non-commercial, commercial, or a CC0 license. The site is a bit cluttered, and if you aren’t careful you’ll be clicking away to a sponsor’s site.

Food and drink pics: There’s a good amount of pictures here related to food and drink, and you’ll find illustration graphics as well as photography.

Freestocks

Freestocks is a free image site with images licensed under a CC0 license which can be used in any personal or commercial application. You can filter results by category and popular tags.

Food and drink pics: The food images on Freestocks are limited, but what they do have is good quality and ranges from ingredients, fruits and vegetables, and plated foods.

Rawpixel

Rawpixel is a site with photography, vectors and illustrations with varying levels of licenses. The Free license requires you to create a free account. Their Casual and Premium license gives you access to more images but you’ll have to pay for them. They also have a CC0 license for some images that are in the public domain.

Food and drink pics: Rawpixel has a couple thousand free pics to choose from which includes illustrations – not a lot compared to some other image sites – and some of the pictures I’ve seen on other sites so they are not unique to Rawpixel but the images are all bright.

Negativespace

NegativeSpace has CC0 licensed images, and the site’s name comes from the visual manipulation of photography – negative space, the part that is not the focus of attention. The site is part of a network of content including the sites 1stWebDesigner, PSDDD and other web developer tools.

Food and drink pics: There are many high quality food images to choose from, some unique to the site and some chosen from other free photo sites, like Burst.