How to Find Free Images to Use on Your Website, etc

For a while it looked like most of the world’s photo collection was going to be owned and managed by two billionaires: Bill Gates and Mark Getty. Their stock photo house companies, Corbis and the aptly named Getty, were neighbors in Seattle that built a $2 billion a year industry. They gobbled small film agencies, digitized everything, added online automation and search functionality. Their work basically revolutionized the business of photos as they managed millions of pictures for publications and ad agencies around the world. But that was in the 90s.

Today there are numerous online stock-photo houses with constant open calls for submissions, mostly from amateur photographers, with free or inexpensive royalty-free photos. Now creative commons licensing and photo sharing sites are shaping the new direction of the industry. Facebook’s stats page claims 700 million photos are uploaded monthly. Yahoo’s photo-hosting giant, flickr, along with Photobucket, account for millions of new photos each day.

Of course, great quantities of family snapshots don’t equate to usable photos for commercial work. The new challenges are how to navigate and mine these vast archives for stellar, licenseable work. Armed with a little patience, a few tricks, practice and experience, you shouldn’t have to sacrifice too much in the way of quality artwork. Of course, this depends on your needs, search terms, and standards.

Armed with a little know-how, you don’t have to sacrifice much in the way of quality for free or extremely inexpensive artwork. Here’s a video tutorial with some tips on how to navigate and mine great artwork and photography in flickr. Many of the same concepts can be applied to any of the sites.


How to mine flickr and stock-photo houses for improved artwork

Corbis and Getty are still the 800lb gorillas in the industry. They own many of the inexpensive stock photo houses and have various deals with flickr and others. They still hold rights on much of the world’s adored and famous snapshots—Einstein sticking out his tongue, for instance. Corbis owns it, along with the rights to about 100 million more superb photos plugged into an easy-to-search, intelligent database.

If you have the budget to purchase exclusive rights-managed images, you’ll discover amazing work on both Corbis and Getty ranging from a few hundred bucks to upwards of $10,000. If you’ve ever flipped the bill for a professional photo shoot, these prices might seem reasonable. For the rest of us trying to illustrate ads and marketing materials, these new stock options are extraordinary.

Basic Photo Licensing Terms and Where to Find Them Online
Whatever source you use online for your artwork, be sure to double-check the licensing agreement. This is one reason Google Images is a bad choice for commercial work. The licensing information is nonexistent or challenging to locate. Also, their keyword search capabilities’ liberal interpretations retrieve all sorts of junk. When you’re using sites like Wikimedia or flickr, it’s often easy to navigate away from the free creative commons area. Be sure to check each photo’s license agreement carefully, especially for your commercial usage.

• Rights Managed. These account for your pricy online options from professional photographers, often equating to better selections. Prices usually start around fifty bucks for the least amount of rights. Actual prices are set or negotiated based on usage. In both Corbis and Getty, you can select a photo and then see pricing by ticking off various options: print versus online, regional versus global, how long you will use the artwork, and so forth.

• Royalty Free. Many stock photo houses also have or specialize in royalty free images, providing a wondrous array of inexpensive options. Prices are set based on the size of the download, often starting at $1 for a small jpeg perfect for online use. Basically, you may use the artwork however you’d like for illustrative purposes—except for resale on merchandise—for a limited time, like 1 month or 3 months. You might choose which to use based on your search criteria. The collections vary and have focuses. The sites also have different models for joining and paying in attempt to differentiate themselves.
stock.xchng
Fotolia
ShutterStock
Dreamstime
iStockPhoto

• Public Domain. Amazing free artwork to use anyway you want. In the U.S., public domain applies on materials published or produced at least 85 years ago. Outside the U.S., the laws differ. If your search terms bring up classic artwork, architecture, historic figures, life-back-when ideas, old book covers or children’s illustrations from yore, check out these sites that collect public domain work. You’ll find a goldmine of options.
Wikimedia Commons
flickr commons
Burningwell

• Creative Commons. With public sharing sites comes creative commons licensing. Many of the professional photographers contributing to Flickr graciously share some of the work under creative commons. You can use these photos for free with certain stipulations. In all cases, one stipulation is attribution—so you must show the artist’s byline with the photo. There are six versions of the license. In Attribution-NoDerivs, you cannot Photoshop or manipulate the artwork in any way. In Attribution-NonCommercial License, you cannot use the work for commercial purposes. Check out Flickr’s creative commons page http://flickr.com/creativecommons/ for easy to follow explanations of rights and usage.

How to find the best work and shorten your search time
Hunting for photos to match an ad or article can be exhausting. Searching for the right shot is the bane of designers for ad agencies, the publishing industry, marketing and the blogosphere. It can take a roomful of designers an entire day or more scouring online to find the perfect photo. But it doesn’t have to.

To really improve your odds, you need to invest some time initially on these sites as an active member, bookmarking artists and artwork that you like and might use in the future. All these free and affordable sites have sharing and online community features. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind:

• Try searching based on groups and tags in community sharing sites to find the best shots quickly, like this tag  in flickr for shots with at least 10 people marked in their favorites. Take a look at the video tutorial to learn more.
• Join the site to access all of its searching, sharing, and bookmarking features.
• Use community features. Sometimes other people have done the searching already. Sites often have shared light boxes, for “the 100 best island photos” for example.
• Always use the advance search functions. Use broad search topics at first, then search within results.
• Bookmark photos for safekeeping and develop a library of photos for future use.
• On the community sites, develop relationships with photographers you like. Subscribe to their RSS feed and receive new updates on their photo streams.
• Often you just need to change your search term. Try searching rights managed work for picture ideas. Look under the tags for the photos for additional search terms. Often something unexpected and spectacular happens that can change the art direction of a piece.
  
• Be patient and try another approach with a different search term.

I'd love to hear your tips and tricks for scouring the Web to find affordable, stellar artwork. Please share your thoughts on stock photography. Are you struggling to find great material that's affordable? If so, I hope this post helps.