5 reasons why you should start uploading to Unsplash right now (and 3 why you shouldn't)

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I could lose myself for hours in all these beautiful Unsplash photos of jellyfish

5 reasons why you should post pictures to Unsplash

1. Find your images on famous websites

Unsplash is a trusted source and companies and editors around the world draw on its huge database. It’s a pretty cool feeling to randomly stumble upon your own photos and know: I made these. Even though the function is not yet implemented one hundred percent perfectly, there is now the possibility to track where the images were used. The API also gives millions of users direct access to your photos via apps like Trello, Notion or Figma.

You can check where your photos get used on the stats page.

2. Stay motivated learning photography

I started photography about three years ago and shortly after that I started uploading my first snapshots to Unsplash as well. I saw them and thought: Why should they rot on my hard drive when someone else could use them? When one of my first images was featured on the Editorial Page, that was pretty rewarding.

Unsplash motivates you reaching even bigger milestones.

3. Get hired

Though that should not be your main motivation to use Unsplash, because you might just get terribly disappointed, it’s not completely out of the question that you’ll get a job through the platform. In the meantime, the feature has been added to simply indicate on one’s profile that one would be available for paid jobs. Especially in the U.S., Unsplash even works directly with individual creators and collaborates with them on partnerships with companies.

You can set your availability for hiring in the profile settings.

4. Build a portfolio

While it is not trivial to build a photography portfolio with CMS like WordPress, starting from the choice of the right template to the required storage space, an Unsplash profile as landing page is quite a respectable alternative. While you don’t have quite as many options to present your content individually with the automatic chronological sorting, you could sort your photos into Collections, for example. A good example you can follow is Annie Spratt.

Collections help find users more photos in the same style.

5. Backup your JPGs in high quality

Part of Unsplash is that every photo can be made available in the best possible resolution. Accordingly, you can also use Unsplash as a backup of your own JPG library – and that completely free of charge. Of course, this is not very advisable for photos that may contain private content, but for the majority of your vacation photos, this should be fine.

Unsplash always keeps the file in maximum size.

3 reasons why you shouldn’t post pictures on Unsplash

1. Don’t earn anything

Well, the nice thing that all photos are available to everyone free of charge has the obvious disadvantage that photographers cannot earn anything directly with their work. Users haven’t proven to be particularly generous with donations either, so you shouldn’t be financially dependent on your photos when you upload them to Unsplash. Of course, you can still offer them at paid stock databases at the same time.

2. Lose influence who uses your pictures

The Unsplash license is irrevocable, which means you can’t stop someone from using your photo that you don’t want them to. You will have little chance of success if you want to take action against someone who uses your photo in an indecent context.

3. Kill the photography industry

While Unsplash basically has a large following on the part of both users and creators, there are also some voices that harshly criticize Unsplash. Their opinion: You can’t buy anything from exposure (and crediting is not even mandatory), while Unsplash earns money with its strategy. Companies would no longer really need to pay their own photographer, but could simply access numerous images free of charge.

(Header image: Alexander Sinn)