It’s been said that “a picture’s worth a thousand words” so the strength of a good image is not lost on me.

Many websites build their entire theme around one brilliant image. But, what do you do if you’re not a photographer and your artistic skills are lacking?

Enter iStockphoto!

iStockphoto provides royalty-free images. They’ve accumulated well over a million stock photography, vector illustrations, and Flash animations all at excellent prices. There’s no subscription or membership fees. You simply create an account – add credits to it via credit card or PayPal; then buy what you need.

Prices are as follows:
$2.00 for 600×800
$4.00 for 1200×1600
$6.00 for 1920×2560
$10.00 for 2800×4200
$15.00 for 3300×4900

Most images used on the web aren’t that big, so you’re usually looking at $2 to $4 dollars. A small price to pay for an excellent image.

I personally have been using iStockphoto for about two years now and have found the experience to be great; so much so that I wanted to share my last experience with you all.

Last month, while redesigning a website, I came across an animation on iStockphoto that I thought would work perfect. The animation was of several puzzle pieces. But there was one problem, I wanted four pieces in the puzzle and this animation had too many.

I decided to take a chance and e-mail the creator of the animation, Andrew Johnson. It only took a couple of hours before Andrew replied to my e-mail and said that he wouldn’t mind making the changes for me. He created this animation for me which I later turned into this.

Thank you Andrew for your work and professionalism.

The next time you’re looking for that perfect image for your website, I would highly recommend you try iStockphoto and <plug> be sure to view Andrew’s portfolio. </plug>