Posts Tagged ‘images’

One of the top buzz items across the internet this week is that LIFE Magazine, with the help of Google, has scanned and archived millions of photographs from its archives and put them online. This collection includes photographs and etchings dating back to the 1750s and by the time everything has been put online (only about 10% is there now), there will be more than 10 million photos available worldwide. The archive includes photographs taken by some of the most well respected photographers in history including Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa .

Of course, this isn’t the first time a valuable image collection has been put online. In early 2008, the Library of Congress put a section of their collection online and invited Flickr users to help them add tags to the photos. Shortly thereafter, several other institutions followed suit and helped create the The Commons on Flickr.

These online resources are a priceless way to learn more about history and culture that was previously only available in museums. Now, people all over the world can enjoy these treasure troves of photography.

Just a quick addition to Aaron’s article on Creative Commons images. There are a couple of other great resources for finding free images online that I wanted to share. The first website is called Morguefile.com and, despite the morbid sounding name, it is a fantastic depository for high resolution images that are free for the taking.

Another good place to look for images is the U.S. government. Most of their material is in the public domain, and so you can often find photo libraries on governmental websites. For example, NASA has a large gallery of images online and there is also a big collection at the USDA Forest Service. The US National Library of Medicine also has an interesting collection of older medical images and those are just a few of many public collections available online. Because of copyright laws, anything created before about 1920 is entered into the public domain, so older images are often free to use. Check out www.fromoldbooks.org as a resource for older images.

This entry would be incomplete if I didn’t mention copyright briefly. When looking online for images, it is extremely easy (and tempting) to run a quick Google Image search and grab anything that looks useful. For children doing schoolwork or for quick small-group presentations, this is probably fine, but it is really a good practice to use ONLY images that you have permission to use. As a victim of online image theft myself, I can say firsthand that it is frustrating as an artist to put the time and energy into creating something, only to have it stolen by someone for free! It is usually clear whether an image is copyright free or not, so a little investigation is all that is needed.

Aaron has done a great job of gathering some very useful online resources together and I will continue to add things here and there and I find them. There is a wealth of free material online, just waiting to be used to make your next presentation pop!