I’m getting ready to do a workshop with teachers on blogging. Finding good images is always a quest so I am beginning to put together a resource that might be helpful for teachers. I am trying to keep the explanation simple and the focus on sites that are free and quick and easy to navigate. If you have other similar “free” graphic places to share please list them on the comments. Since Flickr is my favorite place to look I’ll start with it…..
Flickr is one of the first places I turn to when searching for a dynamic photo for my blog. The selecion is huge, searching is easy and the quality is top-notch. Every photo on Flickr has a license. There are two major categories: “All Rights Reserved†and a “Creative Commons†license. “All Rights Reserved†means hands off! A “Creative Commons†license means that the photographer has reserved some of their rights but lets people use their photos for free under certain conditions. There are 4 major components. Link here to understand the restrictions. The Attribution component is always part of a Creative commons license, so you will always need to provide credit for the photo with a link to them.
Use the Flickr advanced search feature as you can check the box stating that you only want Creative Commons photos to display. Type your keywords and it’ll bring up a page with a huge number of results.Sometimes I use the “most interesting†search filter. Flickr’s concept of interestingness will display unique pictures of high quality. It is just fun to browse through them and lots of ideas for their use will pop in your head!Be sure to check out the Flickr Fun page on this wiki for lots of ideas of ways to incorporate Flickr into your teaching day! Here are some other links. I limited my links to sites where images are offered for free. Directions are on each site for their use. Generally you just have to provide a link of credit.AarinFreePhoto.com
imagebase
PD Photo
PIX
Wikipedia: Free image resources
yotophoto
Here are some tools that will help with your searches and resizing pictures and other techniques to enhance your images.
Creative Commons Search
pic resize 2.0
picnik.com
Credits: I have to give credit to Kevin Jarrett of Welcome to NCS-Tech! His site is terrific and he leads us to countless good sites to use as resources. Many of the above sites came from his blog. Thanks Kevin!
Then Andrew Ferguson of Goldengod has a digital photography site that I could spend hours browsing and learning. In particular I borrowed a lot from these two posts:
I particularly appreciated his explanation of the licenses - clear cut and brief. Plus I like how he gives credit for his Flickr pictures. I’m going to have to switch to that format. Thanks Andrew!
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June 7th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hey Anne,
Thanks for the compliments! I’m glad you enjoyed my site
I gotta say though, it’s a bit unsettling hearing a professor tell me that they actually like something I’ve written
I actually just posted a new article aimed at people who are relatively new to digital photography entitled “How to Take Great Photos Under Pressure”.
You can check it out here:
http://www.goldengod.net/2007/06/07/how-to-take-great-photos-under-pressure/
Thanks again!
–Andrew Ferguson
June 7th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
This reference is quite good for good quality photos that are OK to use.
http://www.morguefile.com
June 7th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
You might want to look at this site to search for Flickr Creative Commons pictures: http://http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/
It gives the attributes for your source easily.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Hi Anne,
Your blog is terrific and I enjoy reading about all your projects and ideas for teachers and elementary students. I love flickr and use it often in the classroom. This year, while studying Africa with my second graders, I found Michael Poliza’s photos. He’s an acclaimed photographer and has published a beautiful book called Africa. On his flickr account he includes the complete selection of images from his book -180 photos in all! I emailed Mr. Poliza to get permission to use a photo or two on my blog since he uses applies full copyright. He emailed me back (from Gabon!) and agreed as long as I gave proper credit. My students loved these photographs and they really enhanced our study of an amazing continent.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poliza/
Lisa Harrison
June 8th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Thanks for this enlightening post on a usually “dark” area for many teachers, at least in my teaching environment…. I’ll let my teacher trainees know about it, since they’ve just started blogging and are bound to find it of high interest!
Gladys
June 8th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Have enjoyed your blog for the last year!
Although this post (http://www.jakespeak.blogspot.com/2007/05/flickr-storm.html) from David Jakes focuses on using Flickr images for Digital Storytelling, I’ve used Flickr Storm often for it’s ease, convenience, and citation! Might be worth checking out and sharing…
June 8th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Hi,
I thought you and other educators may be interested in my web site. I have hundreds of free images that are all in the public domain. You can find them at Public Domain Images. Maybe you’ll find something useful. All the best ~Karen
June 9th, 2007 at 8:25 am
A quick and easy way to leverage Flickr photos is through using FlickrCC which was built by Aussie TAFE lecturer Peter Shanks. The citation is generated right there ready for cut’n'paste. I find that this tool also skirts around the filter here in South Australia as Flickr is blocked.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Good post although some information here is not quite the oen I would normally expected to see here
June 15th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Just a note to thank you for the work on the Blog2learn wiki page on Flickr. The page was just in time to answer my students’ first questions on the issue of using images.
I’ve added a link to your page to the students’ wiki tutorial resource.
http://corpus.wikispaces.com/Tutorials
June 16th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
You might find the extensive list I have on the Teachers’ Page of my website useful:
http://www.bayworld.net/ferlazzo/englishdetails.html#images
There are probably about 30 sites listed that have free images available.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
[…] Jun 20th, 2007 by deborahwrites Anne Davis’s blog entry, A quest for good image sites, discusses finding pictures to use on a blog. In addition to giving the reader a list of websites where one can find pictures, the author also talks about copyright and when one can and cannot copy pictures for using on your own blog. Although I have been blogging for more than a year, I’ve only used original photos. It never occurred to me that there was a place on the Internet where I could find photos to use on my blog. […]
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:35 am
Anne! How wonderful to meet you here at NECC! Thank you so much for the kind words, I’ll do my best to keep finding and profiling the very best resources I possibly can! Little words of encouragement mean a lot! Here’s that picture I snapped earlier!
http://flickr.com/photos/kjarrett/601004796/
Have a great conference!
-kj-
July 29th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Hi Anne
It took me a while to get here after Edubloggercon but thank you so much for sending me to this link. It will be of great use to the staff and will be part of my August in-service! Perfect to for just in time learning!
September 1st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
[…] goldengod iis a blog I came across when I was searching for images. The author is Andrew Ferguson who is a Vancouver photographer. His blog is chocked full of wonderful information and tips on photography. My hope one day is to have time to give to learning more about photography,I really enjoy his posts. They are inspiring. His style of writing appeals to me and I am learning a lot. He lists his top photography blog posts on his side bar. One of my all time favorites is “How to Find Great Free Photos”. I posted about that before here but I continue to find on his blog what I consider to be some of the best tips on the web about photography. Go add this blog to your reading list. […]