History
Founded 3 years ago as a humble Tumblr blog, Unsplash has grown into an industry-leading photography community. It’s become a source of inspiration for everyone from award-winning writers like Deepak Chopra to industry-titans like Apple, and millions of creators worldwide.
Unsplash hits 1 billion photos viewed per month.
Over 3 photos are downloaded a second on Unsplash. And the Unsplash library has grown from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of photos. None of this would be possible without our community. One built on the principle of supporting creativity. Our aim is to make Unsplash the most enjoyable, inspirational community in the world. Join the community or apply here if you'd like to help build Unsplash full-time.
Unsplash Holiday Cards
Get a card. Support a creator. Unsplash Holiday Cards were one-of-a-kind cards made by Unsplash creators. All profits were split with contributors.
Unsplash photos covering the world.
Our community is quickly mapping the world in Creative Commons Zero photos.
Unsplash x Apple TV
We introduced Unsplash for Apple TV bringing thousands of beautiful photos to your living room.
Unsplash turns 3: Approaches 100 million downloads.
In 3 years, over 8.8 billion photos were viewed on Unsplash. And downloaded 92 million times.
Introducing Unsplash HQ & Cafe
We turned our office into a cafe workspace for creators. Story on Fast Company, HypeBeast, and Cool Hunter.
SpaceX historic rocket sea landing on Unsplash.
SpaceX makes history landing the first rocket at sea. And giving that photo for anyone to use on Unsplash.
Apple iPad x Unsplash
Apple iPad Pro launches with photos from Unsplash contributors Samuel Zeller and Anton Repponen.
Photos featured on Unsplash now viewed more than the frontpage of the New York Times.
With over 500 million photos viewed per month, Unsplash becomes the most viral photography platform in the world.
Pringles ad: May be one of the best things ever made with Unsplash.
"You'll be her favorite grandkid, Andrew, once you give Grandma the #LastPringle." Original photo by Alex Harvey.
Unsplash Collections: Searching Unsplash gets smarter.
You’re the curator now. Unsplash Collections opens Unsplash up for anyone to create, sort, and share collections of Unsplash photos.
Introducing Unsplash Book
Unsplash Book becomes the first fully crowdsourced open book featuring 250 pages of photos, essays, and art with contributors receiving a percentage of all profits. Featured by Kickstarter.
Unsplash Instant launches
Unsplash Instant puts downloadable Unsplash photos in your browser tabs. Instant was created during our #makeday hack event we have each month.
Unsplash API launches: Putting 30,000 high-resolution free photos in your app.
What would you build with access to the most powerful photo engine in the world? We launched Unsplash API to bring more exposure to contributors and make it even easier to build great things with Unsplash photos.
Apple x Unsplash
We partnered with Apple stores in Montreal, Boston, and New York for Apple’s "Shot with iPhone" campaign. We turned Apple Stores into art galleries with photos from Unsplash.
Unsplash Events go worldwide: From Tokyo to Seoul to Honolulu to London.
Over 30 events organized by local Unsplash Ambassadors.
Unsplash turns 2: Triples in 6 months.
Unsplash turns 2 and hits 30 million downloads from 15 thousand photos, by 8 thousand photographers.
The First Unsplash Event
Starting in our hometown of Montreal, we began hosting events to meet and connect our community.
Our way of doing business covered in Fast Company and Inc.
We believe making something useful is the best marketing there is.
Full story • Fast Company • Quartz • Inc
Unsplash Search
Unsplash Search launches powered by hundreds of thousands of tags contributed by the Unsplash community.
Unsplash moves off Tumblr. Passes 1 million downloads per month.
Unsplash passes 1 million downloads per month. To keep up with growth, we moved Unsplash off Tumblr to a fully custom site. 776 photos on Unsplash at the time.
Unsplash hits 10 million downloads.
Unsplash hits 1 million downloads.
Co-founder Luke Chesser becomes first full-time Unsplash team member. (Finally gets his own desk.)
Luke had been sharing a beat up, sad-looking table. He was so excited to finally have his own desk that he posted it on Unsplash. Luke's desk has now been seen by over 2.7 million people.
Unsplash launches as a $19 Tumblr theme
We hated expensive, cheesy stock photos. Instead, we teamed up with a local photographer to take a few custom shots.
We only used one photo though. So with the extras, we setup a $19 tumblr theme and gave the rest of the images away for free. We launched on Hacker News and were voted the top story.
First 10 Unsplash photos uploaded to public dropbox
The first 10 Unsplash photos were hosted with Dropbox links.
Before Unsplash...
there was...
We’ve got big plans for the future of Unsplash. If you want to help us create it, we’d love to hear from you.
We owe a huge thank you to the selfless Unsplash contributors who give their work for free in support of the community. Without them, none of this would be possible.
❤️️ With love,