Constant Content

Hi everyone,

I am having trouble obtaining photos of paintings, clothes, etc. to include with my articles. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Best Regards,

Lisa

www.webwritereditor.com
www.bookaddiction.blogspot.com

Hi Lisa,

There are a bunch of stock photo sites on the web - many free. Try www.morguefile.com,
www.freestockphotos.com, www.geekphilosopher.com, www.bigfoto.com, www.firstgov.gov,

www.sxc.hu/index.phtml -- this one under advanced search choose the option for no restrictions and it will show only those you can use for free.

Hope this helps! Do you find if you include photos you get better results? I've only included photos a few times when I had some of my own that were worthy but I think of them as "bonuses" for the customer. I don't know if they were appreciated or not

I wonder if there would be a market for selling photos similar to the way we sell articles. Just a thought. I, too, have included a couple photos (in the public domain) and thought of them more like bonuses for the customers. --J.

Hello Celeste,

They're all very useful! Thank you so much for your help.

Images of specific paintings seem to be very hard to obtain though. Does anyone know anything about these?

Regards,

Lisa

www.webwritereditor.com
www.bookaddiction.blogspot.com

I know I can usually find anything I need on Google's images search. The tricky part is locating copyright free images. If the paintings are old, this is usually not a problem as they are in the public domain. Copyright law is trickier than ever in this digital age--I wonder if there's a new book or reference source for it. --J.

Try this site -- I think you still have to pay -- but for paintings, art and just for viewing it's cool: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigi ... ut_faq.cfm An idea might be to provide a link to the image as a courtesy and let the customer worry about purchasing it on their own?

When the guy was buying all the SD articles I included photos with some of my articles because I'm a local as a nice perk for him.

I also posted some photos only for locations I thought he might like - For instance Balboa Park (I didn't write about that one but someone else did) but he didn't bite. I priced them cheap too. But you couldn't just view the photos. I had to describe them so who knows?

I saw that there were many questions in regards to stock imagery. First off, I am a professional photographer (over 20 years of experience) and already do the stock image thing. I have included photos with my articles in the past and have actually come to the conclusion that I'm probably not going to do it anymore. It simply doesn't pay - even if you use royalty free images. See the stock imagery services actually charge a research fee - in essence you are giving away that service free of charge when you include a royalty free image from another site.

Second, the way that CC works - you can't separate out the image licensing and the article licensing. So, when the author sells the article with all rights and the image is included - they get all rights to that image. Ethically the author should not use stock imagery (royalty free) when selling all rights or exclusive rights. I acutally had to take one off of my image site when I sold the article with an image in it - and never the less, was not pleased with how the purchaser degraded the image quality because they used .gif instead of a jpg. (like I had it) on the web.

Third, publications for print need higher resolution images than for the web. CC doesn't accept high resolution files. The better and more well known stock imagery companies offer images that are 50mb files - yes that is per file! This assures that good quality print no matter what the project.

Google images -- as an artist I got burned by Google images. Someone used one of my images on their "personal" site without my conscent. They had it for over a month before I took action. If you read the Google help for Google images - it specifically says for reference purposes only. This is great for users who are trying to identify plants, insects and such. I have read where image researchers use Google images to try to "find" the images they want. It is a choice open to all. I made the decision not to use Google images. I only have 1 image at any given time show up in the image search - but still, even that wasn't good enough, I still got burned.

Now on to the images for a single dollar. Sites like istockphoto.com are considered micropayment agencies. These micropayment agencies have sent shockwaves through the stock photo world. It's a matter of choice to use them or not. What they don't tell you is that you have to sign up with them first and purchase "credits" or "tokens". Minimum amount is $20. So, even if you just want 1 image and it costs only 3 credits or tokens - you still pay $20 to get that 1 image. Approximately 1 credit or token = $1. Oh, and you think that the artist gets a slice of it? Nope! The artist only gets a % of the sale price (roughly 40% of the 3 credits or $3). So not worth it! There are no guarantees that the files are of high quality. I believe that artists should get paid for their work - I don't believe that they should get mere pittance.

Sorry for the long post. I wanted to pass information along. I will gladly answer any questions that anyone has.

A word of caution when offering location photos - legally you should obtain a property release when shooting property. This ensures that there are no law suits. The common problems that are encountered by novices when they are photographying city streets & parks are:
1) most of the time you need a photography permit issued by the city, county, or park. Sometimes if you stay on public ground you won't need it.
2) Archicture and city skylines are most often trademarked by the architects and no doubt you will get harassed. As is in the cases of Ft. Worth, Dallas, New York and Chicago. Many law suits already currently exist in the courts.
3) National parks (here in the States) are becoming more strict on obtaining photography permits, these are only needed if you sell the photos or transfer rights. The permit acts as a property release in itself in this case. To obtain a permit you must have proof of public property liability insurance.

When offering photos with articles for purchase this is legally defined as commercial photography - which inherits a completely different set of rules than private use.

To sum up: be insured, get permits or permission and don't violate trademarks and copyrights.