As far as grabbing photos from stock photo sites, I am of the opinion that if it is for your personal site and not for any commercial use it would be okay to use the images in some form or another. Maybe altering them in Photoshop or something would be a way to get around it. But if you use it in any commercial way, you're breaking their copyright.
As a graphic designer I spend thousands on stock licenses, mostly from sites like Gettyimages, Corbis, PictureQuest (a good site to search through many different stock photo sites) and others. And if you think the royalty free images are expensive, single-use licensed images can run into the thousands... It's quite a racket they have going.
PS: The amount they charge is very reasonable, however... Photographers have to make a living too!! Royalty free images are a bargain but you get what you pay for....The hard part is explaining that to a client!!!!