Unsplash

Unsplash is a website dedicated to proprietary stock photography. Since 2021, it has been owned by Getty Images. The website claims over 330,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 13 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 5 million photos (as of April 2023). Unsplash has been cited as one of the world's leading photography websites by Forbes, Design Hub, CNET, Medium and The Next Web. History Initially a pioneer of the copyright-free photography model, Unsplash was created in 2013 by Montreal-based entrepreneur Mikael Cho. While creating a new homepage for his company Crew, Cho was unable to find a suitable stock photo and hired a photographer instead. Afterwards, Cho posted the outtakes from his company photoshoot on Tumblr, inviting people to use them as they saw fit. Unsplash received more than 50,000 visits on its first day. Cho supplied the first batch of photos to Unsplash, which then received contributions from amateur and professional photographers. Due to the volume of photo submissions, the site employed an editorial team and "curators" picked from the Unsplash community, including Guy Kawasaki, Nas, Khoi Vinh, Amanda Hesser and Om Malik.