Where to Find Free Images and Art Resources for Blogs?

Where does one find images that can be posted online with­out infring­ing copy­right laws? That’s a common prob­lem faced by blog­gers, at least by the ones who don’t want a DMCA com­plaint filed against them.

With most of the online mate­r­ial belong­ing to some­one and being posted by some­one else, it’s easy to unknow­ingly become an accom­plice to con­tent theft. Some­how, it’s easier to tell when text is free for dis­tri­b­u­tion. What about all the ubiq­ui­tous art and images with no obvi­ous author­ship or copy­right notices? In many cases it’s impos­si­ble to tell. It would be desir­able to get them at the source, or at sites with clearly stated own­er­ship and dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies.

There are plenty of “stock image” sites on the inter­net where one can buy dig­i­tal con­tent for prices rang­ing from accept­able to what-are-they-thinking. Their qual­ity vary­ing, like­wise, from unin­spired to processed-by-the-dog. Most blog­gers, how­ever, are not com­mer­cially rewarded, and paying for con­tent would make little sense to them.

Are there any sites that make images and art avail­able for free? And, if so, are their offer­ings good enough to enhance your con­tent, instead of pol­lut­ing your pages? I’ve found a hand­ful of them and, for­tu­nately, their number seems to be increas­ing lately. In volume, they are still no com­pe­ti­tion to the pro­fes­sional stock pho­tog­ra­phy archives, but their price is right.

Here are a few of them:

Wike­me­dia Com­mons
For the best picks try the “fea­tured images” or the “qual­ity images” sections.

The Morgue File
It’s pos­si­bly the largest col­lec­tion on the inter­net. The media can be used for either per­sonal or com­mer­cial projects.

Stock​Vault.net
It looks like a reg­u­lar com­mer­cial stock photo site, but offers lots of JPG files dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons non-​commercial license.

Big​foto.com
Mostly ama­teur col­lec­tions cat­e­go­rized by place and theme. Free to use but requires a link to their service.

Flickr Cre­ative Com­mons
It’s Flickr, what else can one say? The page sorts sev­eral photo gal­leries accord­ing to their license. Just chose the right one for your needs.

For more infor­ma­tion on the dif­fer­ent lim­i­ta­tions of licenses and a spe­cial­ized search engine for avail­able works check the Cre­ative Com­mons site.

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