Why I give my photos away for free

My photos have had more than 10 million views on a stock image site - and I haven't earned a cent.

Believe it or not, that's the point.

I've been publishing my personal photos to the stock image platform Unsplash since 2018, where photographers upload their own images to be used for free, with no attribution required.

So far, I've only uploaded 35 images, which together have been downloaded 130,000+ times and used all kind of ways: from Sigma projects to Trello boards, and even BuzzFeed quizzes.

The vast majority of these downloads (105k) are from a single image - a waterfall in lake Taupo that you can only access by boat.

My all-time favourite use was when the UK Green Party held a local conference in Brighton, and used my photo as the promo image.It's been a great excuse to take my camera out - even if I do so infrequently!

More importantly, it's my small way of contributing to a platform that I've benefited hugely from for years.

Unsplash have an awesome mission, and it's by far the easiest stock photo site to find inspiration for a project.

My next big Unsplash milestone is 500k downloads... so I think it's time to take the camera out again soon!

You can check my photos out for yourself here.