You’ve approached us for a website design. We’ve established whether you need a cms or a simple HTML site. We’ve set everything up, the website template is just what you envisaged, and you’ve done your preparation work and provided us with all the copy we need for each page. However, all that text just looks drab and uninviting, but fear not, because with the addition of a few simple pictures, pages instantly become brighter and more inviting.

This usually produces responses along these lines:

“but where do we get these pictures?”
“We haven’t got the time to take them ourselves, and we don’t have the budget to pay a professional to do it for us”
“This is not an affordable or viable solution”

Fortunately, help is at hand as this is where stock image sites come in.

Ranging from:
the high end Getty Images,
to the affordable iStock
to the free (but check the license on each pic) stock.xchng

We would advise that, unless you want something incredibly specific, you start with stock.xchng or a similar site, and go from there. Alternatively, dust off the camera and get snapping!