Stock Photos or Stock Photography is using existing pictures of common places, streets, people that can be bought online & is royalty free.

There are many websites today offering some of the largest collection of Stock Photography. Here are some site below:

[1] iStockPhotos.com - my favorite site. I almost always use this while searching for Stock Photos. It also has a simple user interface, with full images dynamically show in DHTML popup when you hover over thumbnails. You don’t need to buy any subscription plans, unlike some site. You just add desired images to shopping cart, & pay for it.

If you are looking to earn some money out of your stock photo collection, then you can submit. Maintaining high quality stock images is their priority. So its not a simple/ straightforward process. They will ask you to submit three samples of your Stock photography. Based on personal evaluation of your submitted stock images, iStockPhoto would accept or most of the time even may reject your application. So only serious professionals are considered.

[2] GettyImages : GettyImages has been into Stock Photography since internet. It also has one of the largest collection of Stock photos. I have observed that many Stock Photo websites get feed from GettyImages.

[3] Photos.com : Another good collection of Stock images. But you need to buy a minimum monthly subscription plan for $99/ month.

[4] public-domain-photos.com : This site offers public domain photos that are free price & royalty-free. Sometimes being free does put restriction on quality, but do give it try first before visiting paid sites.

[5] Fotolia.com, [6] GettyImages.com : A good resource similar to iStockPhotos.

How you can use Stock Photo?
Let me repeat a cliche- “A Picture speaks Thousand Words.” There are many areas you can use Stock Photos- be it personal or official.

• Presentations: Use a compelling picture on issues of global warming, than putting loads of facts. This is what helped Al Gore succeed in presenting Global warming to worldwide audiences & even got him an Oscar for his documentary.
• Websites: use Stock photos along with website text to make your point. I have seen many good examples where people have used stock photos to project their company’s professional image.
• Documentation: Icons, small images can be effectively used in documents.
• Blogs Banners: I have personally used one of the images from iStockPhoto to create a banner for my blog - RohitBlog.com. You should consider outsourcing your design requirements for right reasons. In my case, designing a banner was small tasks which not many free lancers would have taken, And in the end, it was gratifying experience.