Tag: free photos

6 Places To Find Public Domain Images For Your Books And Blogs

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by Mercedes Tabano II

If you’ve been using images for any length of time, you’re probably already familiar with what a creative commons license is. These licenses are good, but mildly restrictive. However, there’s something better than a creative commons license and that’s the public domain license.

Public domain images can be used for any purpose, including commercial, because their copyright has either run out or it was never copyrighted in the first place. With public domain images, you can modify, combine with other images and even use them as a logo for your book all without requiring attribution or compensation of any kind. If you turn the image into something new (by combining it with other images or altering it significantly enough), you can even get a new copyright on your altered image. So where do you find these images? Glad you asked. Continue reading “6 Places To Find Public Domain Images For Your Books And Blogs”

If it says free, can’t I use it?

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CC Logo Shirt, by CreativeCommoners, available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/2900307100/ under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. More licensing information here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Blog posts, websites, book covers, bookmarks, trailers. For writers, we sure do use a lot of photographs.

If you’re like me, your photography skills leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, there are some inexpensive (even free) options available, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we can download and use willy-nilly.

More often than not, there are some requirements we must meet in order to use even free photographs. Otherwise, we might find ourselves on the wrong side of a copyright infringement suit.

Creative Commons is my favorite place to search, because they make it easy to find free photos, artwork, music, and audio. They have very specific requirements for use, however. Let’s walk through the process. Continue reading “If it says free, can’t I use it?”