How photo licensing platform Stills is helping designers create the best work of their careers

As a designer, art director or creative director, it's a constant struggle to source the right images for your work. We've all clocked countless hours searching through thousands of filler images on traditional stock libraries, only to come up short. Yet either your budget or calendar (or both) doesn't allow a bespoke photoshoot. And that limits your options to the same old, stale stock everyone else uses.

That's why we're recommending Stills, a new photo-licensing platform with fresh, relevant images shot by in-demand photographers. Read on to learn how a membership can help you bring your concepts to life and create career-defining work.

A roster of in-demand photographers

Until recently, images from the most respected photographers simply weren't widely available for commercial licensing. Now that's all changed. Stills has partnered with some of the most in-demand photographers today, making their work available for licensing for the very first time.

In partnering with in-demand commercial photographers, paying them above the market rate, and carefully curating their work, the Stills collection is above and beyond anything provided by a traditional stock library. Once you check out the incredible work on Stills, you'll see what we mean.

Time-saving search filters

No one wants to spend their day crawling through a huge database of photos. Stills offers sophisticated search filters so you can search by category, artist, composition, orientation, colour palette, location, season, time of day, and more. That way, you'll find what you need much more quickly, giving you more time to spend designing, concepting and creating.

Relevant, authentic images

Pitching and building design concepts with tired content is like fighting with your hands tied behind your back. In contrast, a Stills membership provides access to relevant, authentic images so you can license content up to your standards.

The platform ensures that its most in-demand photos have a limited number of licenses, so you won't see them used in multiple campaigns at once. You can even put a market freeze on specific images you'd like to reserve exclusively for your projects.

Finally, Stills adds thousands of fresh images each week, so you can always expect something new (and something your clients haven't seen) to help your work truly stand out.

Seamless collaboration and pitching

In 2023, it's rare to work on a design project by yourself. But when you need to keep colleagues, clients and collaborators in the loop, Stills has covered too.

Stills' highly customisable Boards feature allows you to collaborate with others in real-time, create mood boards, and build beautiful client pitches. A Stills membership also includes a monthly allotment of unwatermarked comps, so you can give your clients a better idea of your concept and pitch with images you can actually license.

Exclusive to Stills: 9 world-class photographers

Stills works with some of the most innovative and globally celebrated photographers in the industry, and many of them are also available for commissioned shoots.

To get a sneak peek of what Stills can offer, here are just nine of the renowned photographers whose work is exclusively available on the platform.

1. Josua Stäbler

Josua Stäbler is a director of photography based in Stuttgart, Germany, working on commercials, documentaries and passion projects around the world. He loves to craft real, tangible things, so he shoots on analogue 16mm and 35mm film. He's attracted to faraway places and lost cultures, gets goosebumps from beautiful lens flares, and likes nothing more than light touching human skin.

2. Ben Strang

A filmmaker and photographer whose repertoire spans mediums, Ben Strang's storytelling approach is born from a fascination with startlingly unique individuals and locations. Based in Venice, California and Brooklyn, NYC, he's known for his ability to find indelibly human moments in the nuance of everyday life.

3. Lindsey Swedick

Lindsey Swedick is a commercial product and food photographer in New York City. She specialises in helping brands bring concepts to life through eye-catching still-life images and stop-motion animations.

4. Megan Rogers

A film and digital photographer currently based in LA, Megan Rogers. She's known for her exceptional portraiture and epic landscape shots, as well as often combining the two approaches.

5. Bruno Pisani

Italian landscape photographer Bruno Pisani's distinctive style combines both wide and vast scenes as well as intimate telelens shots with foggy and misty conditions. The Dolomites are his daily playground, but he's also starting to widen his portfolio to include places like Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Lofoten Islands.

6. Roman Fox

Roman Fox is a photographer and YouTube creator based in London. He sees photography as a means to document his adventures, whether in the streets of New York or the mountains of Wales and focuses equally on street and landscape approaches.

7. Eren Sarigul

A self-taught photographer and filmmaker specialising in travel, lifestyle and city photography, Eren Sarigul's work has been shaped by being both a proud Londoner and Istanbulite. His passion for photography began in 2015 with his first visit to Japan, where he instantly fell in love with the country's geography, culture, and people. He continued to shoot upon his return home, seeing his life in London through a new lens.

8. Nolis Anderson

Nolis Anderson is an artist born in Chicago, Illinois. After completing his Doctor of Pharmacy program in 2012 and two years of working in the field of medicine, he took an indefinite hiatus in order to focus on his career as a commercial portrait and lifestyle photographer.

9. Lauren Withrow

Born and raised in Texas, Lauren Withrow began photographing at the age of 15. Now based out of New York City, her portrait and fashion images are heavily influenced by cinematic themes.