How we got here — Ferrolith

a television studio lit for a shoot — photograph by SHAHBAZ ZAMAN on Pexels

November 12, 2024

🧊Volumetric scans join the library

From today the Ferrolith library accepts volumetric scans alongside flat stills.

Volumetric scans join the library

paint-covered hands held open over a palette — photograph by cottonbro studio on Pexels

October 3, 2024

🏆The Grain Prize turns four

A fourth season of the Grain Prize, judged this year by four independent picture desks and the 2023 shortlist.

The Grain Prize

long shelves of boxed archive material — photograph by Mario Spencer on Pexels

August 18, 2024

🚀4,180,000 photographs on Ferrolith

The library passed 4.18 million frames, uploaded by 318,400 contributors.

Celebrating 4.18 million frames

a photographer checking a camera back beside a laptop — photograph by Kawê Rodrigues on Pexels

July 6, 2024

🖼️Backdrops for video calls

Ferrolith photographs are now selectable as virtual backdrops inside our desktop app.

Ferrolith backdrops

hands sorting slides out of a yellow tin — photograph by cottonbro studio on Pexels

May 2, 2024

🧭Introducing Traces

The new Traces panel shows you exactly where and how each of your photographs is being used.

Learn more

a concrete civic building against a green sky — photograph by Steve Pancrate on Pexels

March 24, 2024

🤝Ferrolith is joining Quarrow Group

A turning point for the library, and one we have thought about carefully: Ferrolith is joining Quarrow Group.

Ferrolith carries on as its own brand and its own team. What changes is reach — Quarrow Group brings archives, legal footing and a distribution network we could not have assembled alone, and every one of those goes toward the same goal we started with: the most useful open library of photography anywhere.

Ferrolith is joining Quarrow Group

a city grid at night from above — photograph by Mo Eid on Pexels

January 21, 2024

📱The Ferrolith phone app grew up

We reworked nearly all of it: discovery, navigation, search, profiles and more.

The Ferrolith phone app grew up

a print under red safelight in a darkroom — photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

January 9, 2024

🔍Introducing Frame Match

Teaching software to read a photograph the way an editor does is hard. Frame Match is our attempt: drop any frame into Ferrolith and it returns near neighbours, topics and the original plate.

Introducing Frame Match

a photographer framing a shot through a viewfinder — photograph by cottonbro studio on Pexels

January 9, 2024

💼Introducing Ferrolith Roster

Roster is a more direct way to reach and commission the photographers behind the library. Whether you need one frame reshot for a launch, a studio day in a city you have never worked in, or a standing arrangement for a magazine's picture desk, Roster puts you a message away.

Ferrolith Roster

a corridor of card-index drawers in an archive — photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

August 14, 2023

🎁Opening the Ferrolith dataset

We published the widest carefully-labelled open photography dataset released so far, free for anyone to use in research on image quality, retrieval, captioning and more.

🚀Two milestones in one week

2.4 million contributions from 214,000 photographers

a cantilevered concrete library at midday — photograph by Rick Han on Pexels

May 19, 2023

🌍A public archive for civic imagery

We worked with a coalition of city health services to build an openly-licensed public information image set for the web.

Learn more

a stone arch above a weathered facade — photograph by Nairod Reyes on Pexels

February 6, 2023

🏛️Reading rooms join Ferrolith

The Marlbury Reading Room, the Cadgwith Maritime Archive, the Tuckett Museum Trust and dozens more are opening their holdings to the Ferrolith community.

a small product studio with lights and a tripod — photograph by Anton Gofman on Pexels

December 4, 2022

✍️Introducing Ferrolith for Studios

We launched Ferrolith for Studios, a quieter kind of advertising for the web. One that does not have to interrupt anybody to work.

Learn more

a pupil answering at the front of a classroom — photograph by Katerina Holmes on Pexels

July 18, 2022

🎓Ferrolith goes to campus

We launched Ferrolith for Campus, which connects students and tutors to photography they can actually use. Through our work with course designers, the library now sits inside lesson plans in schools and universities worldwide.

Discover Ferrolith for Campus

old family photographs spread across a table — photograph by John Barnard on Pexels

July 11, 2022

🦁The Marlbury Reading Room joins Ferrolith

The library moves into unfamiliar territory, thanks to the Marlbury Reading Room's new account and the documentary photography it keeps.

Download their photographs

a snow ridge breaking through cloud — photograph by Alina Chernii on Pexels

June 28, 2022

⬇️900 million downloads

Which means the community has helped make 900 million things — decks, reports, sites, zines, murals, wallpapers, and plenty we will never see.

hands shaping a bowl on a potter's wheel — photograph by Rüveyda on Pexels

May 15, 2022

🙌Thank you, 800,000 times

800,000 photographs have now been given to Ferrolith — letting more people make things, letting more problems get solved. We owe every bit of it to a stubbornly generous community.

It is all thanks to you

an open laptop on a bright desk by a window — photograph by EVG Kowalievska on Pexels

March 9, 2022

⚡The Ferrolith API reaches further

More than 740 products now run on the Ferrolith API. With writing tools, deck builders and three newsroom systems added this quarter, the library is easier to reach than it has ever been.

Learn about the Ferrolith API

a developing tray glowing in a darkroom — photograph by Annushka Ahuja on Pexels

December 2, 2021

⭐A new mark for Ferrolith

After four years behind a borrowed camera glyph, our design team worked with Perrin Hale on an identity that finally fits the library.

scrub on red desert ground under a pale sky — photograph by Luis Quintero on Pexels

May 22, 2021

🔌The Ferrolith API is built into 420 products

API partners now account for 34 percent of everything distributed from the library, across writing tools, deck builders, wikis and two operating systems.

students working together over laptops in a library — photograph by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels

April 14, 2021

📸Ferrolith passes 640,000 photographs

Four years ago we promised ten photographs every ten days, and we had exactly ten to give. We had no idea whether an eleventh would arrive. Then photographers in 94 countries turned up and made it happen.

a lone hut on open desert flats — photograph by Tom Swinnen on Pexels

April 1, 2021

📲Ferrolith for tablets and phones

Today the whole freely-usable library arrives on tablets and phones. We built it around what people actually do with a photograph, not just around looking at one.

February 23, 2021

💵Ferrolith raises $6.4 million to build an open economy around photography

The library is pushing harder on how photography gets made and paid for than it ever has. Our aim is to make photography a genuinely universal medium, not a licensed one. This round exists to build a different kind of economic footing for the work — one that holds up when the pictures are free.

layered hills fading into blue haze — photograph by 6th Era Photography on Pexels

February 2, 2021

🤝Ferrolith + the Corncrake Review

Every photograph on Ferrolith is now usable inside the Corncrake Review.

January 8, 2021

⬇️Ferrolith passes eleven photograph downloads per second

September 21, 2020

🖥️Introducing: Ferrolith Wallpapers for desktop

A small free app that turns your desktop background into a slow rotation of high-resolution work from the Ferrolith community.

Get Ferrolith Wallpapers

September 5, 2020

📷The Ferrolith library hits 240,000 photographs

Another marker for the community, as more than 38,600 photographers put their work into the open.

August 29, 2020

🏆The Grain Prize

The Grain Prize is a month-long season built to name the contributors whose generosity and craft have shaped the library most.

April 30, 2020

🚀The free Ferrolith API launches

Serving more than 210 million requests a month for 4,900 developers, from side projects to two of the deck builders you already use.