I’ve used photographs from iStockphoto for websites. For less than $50 (often less than $10!) you can get incredible photography from amateur photographers around the world. The selection is huge, and you can search by keyword. And the photos are royalty-free, meaning that you pay just once upfront and that’s it.

But recently for the first time I started browsing iStockphoto’s large pile of illustrations, also available for similarly low prices. It’s hard to browse illustrations by style, but extremely easy to search by subject matter. Looking for computer-related images, I found some dross (of course) but also was amazed to find such a wide range of ideas.

The illustrations are also often available as vector images, which is great if you’re looking to use them at various sizes for web and print, for example.

It’s free to browse. Once you’re ready to buy, you use a credit card to buy iStock credits, and each image is priced according to what size and resolution you need. And then you just download it.

The idea of amateur photography, as opposed to a stock photo source such as Corbis or Getty where the quality is strictly vetted, plus the vast number of illustrations makes iStockphoto a fun place to look around for ideas for your own photo shoots too.