Where To Find Free Images For My Blog Part 4

Mini-Guide, Part 4

Wikipedia
http://wikipedia.org/

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia available in ten languages. When looking up any entry, you might find photos or images that you'd like to use. Some are public domain and available for re-use. To find out, click on the image of interest and read its description to read its copyright rules.

While the search tool's main purpose is to find entries containing the entered keywords, most pages have an image. So if you're looking for a picture of a beagle, enter "beagle" into the search box and click on the image you'd like. Read its description to find out its rules for re-use.

CC Search
http://search.creativecommons.org/

The Creative Commons Search engine specializes in finding different content on the Web, which have been published with a Creative Commons license allowing re-use, and in some cases even modifying the work.

The CC Search is in beta and doesn't yet have image thumbnails of the photos it finds. Its abilities to support effective visual searches is low; however, as soon as more visual data is displayed, this will become a popular destination for finding a rich selection and using images without restrictions.

Apparently the brainchild of a busy traveling English photographer, Ian Britton, FreeFoto is an online resource providing showcase for a many photographic images for which, in spite of the site name, there are strong usage restrictions.

The sites states:

At the same time we allow anyone to download our web size images to use on the internet (link back and attribution required)

Also non-commercial users may download our web size images to use off-line in school projects, church services, leaflets, etc. Basically if your off-line use is not commercial you can download our web size images for free. All we ask is that you follow these simple rules.

You must credit the FreeFoto.com web site on your website or alongside any non commercial printed use. If you use one of the full screen images you must place a hypertext link with the line Supplied by FreeFoto.com in a conspicuous place.

We also ask that you add a (c) FreeFoto.com to the image alt tag. You may also use our images on blogs, forums, social networking sites and video sharing sites like YouTube. You MAY NOT use the images to create your own photo gallery web site.

So, while there is an assortment of high quality photos available on the site, I don't consider this resource similar or equal to the others listed on this page. The key difference between this and the others is that — while FreeFoto is clearly marketing "paid for" pictures through ambiguous calls to free offerings — all other resources focus their efforts in helping people share, access and re-use visual images mostly without commercial motivation.

An interesting aspect of FreeFoto is Ian Britton's world travels and great shots. To follow his travels, go to http://freefoto.blogspot.com/ to see the places he is visiting. All of the photos in the blog are all available inside the main FreeFoto catalog, too.

FreeFoto covers many categories including: 911 Emergency, Alphabet, Food and Drink, General, Japan, Nepal, Number, Recreation, Transport, Business, Europe, Nature, United Kingdom, USA and more.

The site has existed since 2002 and doesn't require registration to access it. You may want to be conservative about using the pictures found on the site unless they offer unique alternatives for which the $30 fee (web publication) might be acceptable to you.

Ourmedia is a (still in alpha) non-commercial free clearinghouse for all rich-media content for sharing, re-use and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

In partnership with the Internet Archive, Ourmedia has unlimited storage space for hosting user submitted images, video and audio clips. There are no costs and the only requirement is that the material is not protected by copyright. This allows some re-use and republication as every image clearly indicates.

Ourmedia also provides a cross-platform software tool called Ourmedia Publisher, which facilitates the direct uploading and licensing of individual imagery and clips of any size under any preferred non-traditional copyright license (e.g. Creative Commons and public domain.).

Ourmedia is a grassroots initiative allowing individuals to post and share their personal rich-media recordings and it provides access to a fast-growing archive of interesting materials.

The available search and limited image display features in Ourmedia do not make the service interesting enough to be used as an alternative free image resource... yet. But if things proceed according to plans along with the great ideas that the team behind Ourmedia has shown so far, you should expect Ourmedia to become a worthy player in this field soon.

Flickr
http://ww.flickr.com/

Flickr.com, bought by Yahoo, is one of the best ways to store, search, sort and share your photos. This online software application and image resource has super features and a community of world contributors, plus it's s easy to use.

Not your typical photo archive, Flickr is more of a repository of personal shots and individual home photo collections as opposed to a public repository for images to be shared and re-used. But with the large amount of content available, it is difficult not to find something that could fit your visual needs.

Flickr is free, and only requires registration if you want to start uploading, editing and tagging your own digital images.

Note: Each person publishing images on Flickr can select and specify the type of licensing to be applied to those pictures — from fully reserved copyright to any of the Creative Commons licenses. So look carefully for the explicit author permissions specified on each individual photo page. The Attribution License page lists the 100 most recently licensed photos.

If you haven't yet tried a very useful tool that's complementary to Flickr, check out the Related Tag Browser search interface by AirtightInteractive. This is an effective way to search for visual resources. A must use. Also available is a single and multi-keyword Flickr search interface.

Flickr lets you search for only Creative Commons-licensed images in the advanced search tool, so you don't have to go delving through thousands of images to find the ones free for re-use.

Two tips.

One. Don't discount the design and layout forcing the final image selected to never display in a straight position, but at an angle. It's done by design. The purpose is to have you click through to Flickr to see the selected image in its correct orientation.

Two. Don't get discouraged when you right-click on images in Flickr, you can't find the familiar selection to save them to your local hard disk. The reason is because they have been converted to Flash format. Rather look for a small lens icon with a plus sign inside, look on top of the image displayed inside Flickr — It should say "All sizes." Click it and you get choices in the size and resolution for downloading the image to your hard drive. If the lens icon doesn't show up and "All sizes" is not in view, then register and log in Flickr. That should do it.

http://www.Buzznet.com

Buzznet.com is an online photo-sharing community that allows its members (registration free) to upload images from mobile phones, and post, syndicate and republish digital photos in their blogs. For RSS feeds, look at the bottom of each user page, gallery, community gallery and friends listing.

Marc Brown and Anthony Batt, experts in software development who have also created a unique image publishing software called Photocommunication, founded this site in 2002. Images can be tagged with one or more "buzzwords," (similar to tags) to make it easier for others to search for the images. The site also has a search tool with different options.

The site has an active community thanks to the journals, people and photos. Most of the material is raw as the photos document a personal moment or sight. Therefore, many images have a less polished look, but a higher degree of realism and personalization.

49PM Photo Search
http://server9.49pm.com/
http://www.49pm.com/photosearch.html#yahoo (mobile phone info)

49PM's Photo Search is a free online service that allows you to search the Internet for photos that can be immediately viewed and saved on your mobile phone.

With 49PM technology, it's also possible to view each photo summary and the Internet location. The technology works on almost any Java-enabled mobile phone with a color display — these include many models such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, LG, Samsung and others.

49PM's Photo Search uses Yahoo!'s image search, so you can search millions of photos on the Internet. Photos are downloaded through the 49PM MobileServer, which pre-formats photos before sending them to your phone. This optimizes download times and ensures the photos are formatted to fit your phone's display for your viewing enjoyment!

To download the free beta version, point your mobile phone's browser to www.49mobile.com, select your phone and download. Or, download the application to your PC, from which you can upload it to your phone.

49PM has a unique ability to search for images from blogs. When it finds images, you can see which blog and article they are in and easily add them to your personal online-based image archive. Alternatively, 49PM spits out a small snippet of code which allows you to immediately re-use the image (assuming the rights to do this are explicitly given) in your own site or blog (with automatic full credit to the original poster).

49PM searches all accessible blogs and indexes the newest off-beat photos, audio, podcasts and videos and makes them available and re-usable through its effective online-based interface.

StockVault
http://www.stockvault.net/

Stockvault is a stock photo resource which offers medium-sized images for personal and non-commercial use. Stockvault has evolved from stock.b-man.dk and features images from various photographers, both professional and amateur.

To view the free photos, go to the Stockgallery.Browse over 2,300 images by category or use the advanced search tool. When viewing a photo, you can rate it or click on the disk icon to save it. The details for each photo contains the number of views, file size and number of downloads. Click on Hitlist to see the Top 10 vote getters or check out the list of Photographers, which tells you what cameras they use and where they are from. The site offers an impressive array of impactful and awe-inspiring shots.

PDPhoto
http://pdphoto.org/

PDPhoto.org is a repository for free public domain photos. It contains about 2,000 photographs under a many categories. One person has taken most of the photos.

Unless something is clearly marked as copyrighted, you can assume it is free to use. But if you intend to use an image from here for commercial use, please be aware others may have rights that could be actionable. Specifically, you should assume there was no model release. And pictures featuring products or property should be used with care.

You can easily find out whether or not it is public domain by clicking on the photo and viewing its Creative Commons license. The home page links to newest photos, Jon's (person behind the site) favorite photos, most viewed photos and most recent comments. The site has a forum that resembles a guest book or a list of comments.

Image*After
http://www.imageafter.com/

Image*After is a free online photo collection. Download and use any image or texture from the site to use in person or commercial work per the terms of use. At the top is a drop-down list for browsing images and textures by category or you can use the search box. This well-organized library can be sorted in different ways and the thumbnail pages include the image's dimensions, number of hits and file size. Plus, you can select how many images to display on each page and even make the thumbnails larger by clicking on the magnifying glass.

Clipping is a nice feature that you rarely see on free photo sites. Click on the scissors icon to "clip" the photo and it saves it so when you're done clipping, you can review all of the clipped images in one page by clicking on the bigger scissors icon next to the die icon. To "roll the dice" and get random photos, click on the die icon. After selecting an image to view it, a box in the upper left corner of the image is for opening the image to its full size.

http://tofz.org/index.php

tOfz dot org is one photographer's collection of everyday urban life. Jeremie Zimmerman, the person behind the site, sorts his photos by location and categories. He shares his favorites. You can search by keywords or click on *coma* to get a randomly selected photo.

The category pages use thumbnails and list the number of comments available, if any. The site uses the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons license and free art license (Copyleft Attitude) from License Art Libre. This site is available in English and French. A small, but respectable collection.

Free Stock Photos
http://free-stockphotos.com/

Free-StockPhotos.com is a collection of (what else?) free stock photos available for use in personal and commercial design projects as long as the terms of use are followed. The images are sorted by category, but the category pages don't have thumbnails. Instead, each image appears with related information as you scroll down the page. They also come in multiple sizes for downloading.

You can search for photos by keywords and leave comments. Most recently submitted photos appear on the home page. Click "v Photography Articles v" to read articles offering photography tips. Free Stock Photos has some classy photos.

FreePhotos.com
http://www.freephotos.com/

FreePhotos.com offers over 1000 royalty free photos with no usage restrictions for Web site or print work use. The site doesn't ask for reciprocal links or credits. Photographers who submit photos have a chance to win prizes and here are the Terms of Service and Upload Rules for photographers. Search photos or browse by category, most downloaded, highest votes, members, folders and new photos.
The category thumbnail pages list the title of the photo, photographer's name, size, number of times downloaded and number of times viewed. You can rate the photo on a scale from 1 to 10. It has an email the photo to a friend feature, photographer profiles and lets users leave comments. Click on any Member's name to get more details. A nice site with photos that are worthy of re-use.

Photo Rogue
http://www.photorogue.com/

Photo Rogue has a unique concept — if you can't find a picture you need, submit a request to Photo Rogue and you might see your request fulfilled. The site relies on volunteer photographers. Before submitting a request, review the Guidelines. The service is free and you can read more about the rights in the volunteering FAQ.

The gallery lists the requests from newest to oldest. Each request includes the request, the date of the request, the number of photos in the album and the number of times it has been viewed. Open the album to see its thumbnail images and click on an image to view its full size. The site lets you comment on pictures and it has an RSS feed available.

Aarin Free Photo and Digital Images
http://aarinfreephoto.com/

Aarin Free Photo and Digital Images offers over 950 free photos and images for personal and commercial use. You may download and use the images on your Web site, print ads, brochures or any other end products as long as you display the copyright information per the Web site. Start by clicking on the new images or Free Photo Gallery.

All photos are sorted into one of four galleries, which represent a group of categories. Image Galleries 01, for example, has animals, architectures and houses. When you open an image, you can view its group of pictures as a slide show and read the description of the gallery. At the bottom of the Web page is a search box, but it searches on Google rather than within this site.

Source: MasterNewMedia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.