Photo Resources part 1

One fantastic photo resource is the Flickr Creative Commons group. The picture in this blog is from the creative commons area which provides copyrighted work that is free to use provided you attribute the work to the copyright owner (in this case aussiegall).

You can browse by keyword or search for different thing. I find that if I'm looking for something specific it can be difficult to find it with the Flickr organization system. I'm dependent on individuals tagging their photos in a way that makes sense to me. With Flickr I tend to browse through and look for photos that speak to me, or wow me in some way. I look for the emotional reaction caused by the picture. I may store up a bunch of these images before I find a use for them, but then I have them.

Make sure you look to see the specific copyright requirements for each image since some allow you to change the original work and some don't. All that is clearly spelled out at the main Creative Commons page as well as on each image.

When you find an image you like just click on the "Actions" button above the image then click "View All Sizes." Click the link for "Original Size" to the right then click the link next to "Download:" to save the file to your computer. I try to group my images by the project I'm working on, but you can choose a system that works best for you. Just organize them somehow otherwise you'll become overwhelmed after you've downloaded a couple hundred pictures.

What tips do you have for finding high quality images?