Free Stock Photography from iStockphoto, courtesy of HP

HP and Istockphoto have teamed up and are kicking off their relationship with a free photo download offer.

A picture is worth a thousand words. A great image helps you communicate clearly, quickly and efficiently. Combine your HP color printer with a ready-to-use stock photograph to create a marketing campaign with impact.

Web-ready images: just $1 each. HP has joined forces with iStockphoto, a leading source stock photography site. Find your image in iStockphoto's 500,000+ image library - from business to lifestyles, technology to nature - we've got the right image to help you reach customers.

From their brief lead-in (above) it's nice that HP's not only thinking about printing but also web-ready images. It speaks to their understanding of the full breadth of modern marketing campaigns and not just the print pieces that are usually just a part of such a campaign.

Being a lover of great deals and freebies particularly, I had to immediately click through on the "Learn more about ISP's free images for HP customers" link, to find an image of one of HP's new inkjet printers with what looks to be a full-size (8.5 by 11) photo coming out of it -- not exactly an in-house marketing application, but oh well? (Also interesting that the companies apparently chose the acronym "ISP" to indicate iStockphoto -- literally accurate I guess but confusing. And nowhere else that I look does iStockphoto refer to itself as "ISP".)

Next to this image and an oversized HP Logo (an examination of the url indicates we've entered the Istockphoto web domain) is the following text:

iStockphoto is the Internet’s premier royalty-free stock photography community , where designers can search and download over 742,000 images , starting at just $1.00 each. Our international community of photographers and administrators work tirelessly to bring over 1,000 new images each week!

Choose 30 images from 60 of the hottest shots -- free! Plus, we'll put 5 credits in your account to spend on any images in the iStockphoto libray.

Feel free to download 30 of our sample photos for free. Just click on an image to download the hi-res version.

Moving on to the important things though (i.e. freebies), it's not clear where the other 30 photos are (I only see 30 but was promised I could choose from 60), and the downloading is accomplished via a somewhat clumsy, brute-force user interface, but I hung in there and got my 30 free stock photos and they're beautiful!

I never did figure out how to get my five additional credits, but maybe that's reserved for new customers only, and I've been an "ISP" account holder for some time. Anyway, I've got my 30 shots and they're nice to have!

Overall, I'm glad to see this partnership between two great companies, focused at the specific needs of small business marketers. The user experience needs some cleaning up but this should be a long and prosperous relationships for companies and customers alike.

Comments

Jim Lyons said…
Thanks for the update, Maestrobri! I noticed it earlier today too...think they're listening to us?