How to Build a Photography Research Practice Beyond Pinterest

As photographers, we're inundated with images all day — ads, social media, billboards. Which ones actually inform our work, and where should we be looking?

As a photographer who has worked on brand campaigns, it's sad to see mood boards composed of the same images. I'll receive inspiration images from a client and recognize they came from the same Pinterest board — pulled after someone typed "Running" into the search bar.

What's the point?

In his book "Steal Like an Artist," Austin Kleon makes it clear that no one's work is completely original. He encourages creators to allow influence, remix ideas, and pull from a variety of sources — to avoid imitating any single one and instead make something truly unique.

I've been consuming content from a variety of art directors lately, and I really appreciate their approach to the work. Zoë Yasemin, on her Substack, talks about how creatives often build a database of saved images when we should be researching to draw connections across unrelated fields. She's speaking about building a brand, but I think the logic applies to photographers building compelling images.

Zoë's research is composed of physical sources — bookshops, print archives. But there are a plethora of online sources that don't exist on Pinterest or Instagram. If it pops up on your feed, guess what — it's popping up on thousands of other people's feeds. That's hardly a way to differentiate yourself. If you want a structured way to broaden your visual vocabulary across genres, The Well-Rounded Photographer: 8 Instructors Teach 8 Genres of Photography is a good place to start.

I've compiled a list of sources you can start with. Researching this was hard only because I found so many images I had to stop and look at. Once you see them, it's hard not to take a beat and ask why they're so special.

Physical and Print Sources

• Bookstores or libraries
• Zines (self-published booklets)
• Postcards — Reddit hosts an r/vintagepostcards subreddit
• Video games and graphics — games like Madden '26 let you play virtual photographer
• Magazine covers — Cover Junkie is a collection of artistic magazine covers (full access if paid)

Archives and Libraries

• Library of Congress — massive free archive of historical American photography, Farm Security Administration images, WWII-era documents, and more. Fully searchable and downloadable.

  Tip: Click "Digital Collections," filter by "Available Online," and view by "Grid."

• Europeana — aggregates millions of digitized images, posters, and artworks from European cultural institutions.

• New York Public Library Digital Collections — menus, maps, posters, fashion plates, and photographs spanning centuries.

  Tip: A bit overwhelming. I click "Shuffle" and zoom in on the thumbnails to move faster.

• Smithsonian Open Access — millions of images from all Smithsonian museums, free to use and explore.

• Getty Open Content Program — high-res scans of paintings, drawings, and photographs from the Getty's collection.

  Tip: Scroll down to "Art Collection Search."

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art — archive of artwork in the Met. I find the European paintings to have really inspiring color and composition.

Album Covers and Music Imagery

• The Cover Art Archive via MusicBrainz — community-built, searchable database of album artwork.

  Tip: You can review recently added work, but the archive isn't organized by gallery images.

• Discogs — excellent for browsing physical record artwork, especially obscure labels.
• Rock Archive — music culture through albums and concerts.

Film, Advertising, and Commercial Art

• Criterion Collection essays and stills — rich visual references tied to cinema history and thoughtful framing.

• Movie Poster DB — enormous searchable archive of film posters by era, genre, and country.

  Tip: Click the search icon while the search bar is blank to view the archive with filters.

• Ad Retro — decades of print advertising organized by category and era.

• Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archive — historical records of the outdoor ad industry going back over a century.

  Tip: Click "View Digital Collection," then "Browse All."

Photo Books and Editorial Photography

• Magnum Photos — documentary and editorial work. Deep archive browsable by photographer, theme, and era.

Fashion and Design

• Condé Nast Archive — Vogue, Vanity Fair, and others going back to the early 1900s. Really good selection — sort by color, medium, or art movement.

• V&A Museum Collections — textiles, fashion, posters, and design objects with photography.

  Tip: Click "Search" without anything in the search bar to access the full archive with filters.

Fine Art and Illustration

• Artvee — public domain fine art, heavily skewed toward illustration and commercial art.

• The Public Domain Review — curated, essay-driven explorations of obscure public domain images.

  Tip: Click "Collections" and browse by Images.

• Rijksmuseum Online Collection — Dutch Golden Age and beyond. Colorful paintings and other art. 

Street Photography and Vernacular Images

• Flickr Commons — a partnership between Flickr and major institutions to share historic photo collections.
• Shorpy — large-format historical American photography.

Final Thoughts

Wherever you are in your photography journey, you probably have a nagging feeling that you want to make something different — something compelling, something unique. Build your research practice and it might unlock another level.