Free High Quality Backgrounds
Upping your game for your virtual presence
Getting the right background for your Teams, Zoom or <insert preferred collaboration technology here>, is as much a professional choice, as it is a personal branding statement. Sure you can go with the defaults that come with your app, but it’s always going to be fun to choose something which says a little… this is me.
Microsoft has steadily been releasing more and more backgrounds that you can use for your web calls, some are branded, some are seasonal, some are from TV shows, and some just scratch that itch for nostaligia. You can get them from here.
I am a fan of the rolling grassy hills from Windows XP to be honest.
Of course there are a number of different places you can go to get backgrounds or images for free:
Unsplash — I see a lot of people using this for images and backgrounds.
Pexels — I use Pexels a lot for a lot of imagery.
However the ones that are located at the sites where they are built specifically for Teams and Zoom should give you the best outcome.
Taking it to the next level…
One final option when it comes to backgrounds but taking it to the next level, is to look at using a video background. This approach never ceases to amaze and get the conversation going in any meeting, I have loved to use this a lot. It does involve a couple of extra steps, but all the software used is free via OBS Studio.
Be you…
Just because you are online, shouldn’t mean you miss the opportunity to express yourself through your online presence on web calls. There are plenty of options out there for you to choose from… and don’t forget the ultimate background, where you take a picture of yourself, then appear again in front of it :-).
Of course using a video of yourself as the background could be the tool you use to skip meetings, but let’s keep that between us.
