other folks' web sites
Photographs are widely available on the web, sometimes for a fee, sometimes for free. You generally get what you pay for, trading limited use, poor quality or low resolution for the privilege of not paying, or a chunk of change for high quality, professionally produced photographs.
Stock photographs are photographs being resold after their initial creation for a client assignment. There are hundreds of agencies and individuals offering images made by thousands of photographers and many of them are now online. These are high quality photographs, relatively well-indexed and searchable, generally used by purchasing. Of course, there are many sites with low quality images who would also like you to pay them for their work.
Archives and libraries often have print and photograph departments and many are gradually getting some portion of their collections online. While images from these sources are often historic, there are contemporary pictures as well. The range of images that can be found is fairly wide – from the
Sydney Opera House to Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother. Reproduction and service fees vary, with some repositories charging little to nothing and others charging according to use.
Government agencies are a great example of high quality images available for free to the tax-paying public.
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Disclaimer! I am not a lawyer and this is a very broad stroke on a complex issue. Take responsibility for your work, especially if you're designing a commercial site. Bahar Gidwani authored a useful white paper, Licensing Still Images: Some Basic Information for Multimedia Producers
Every image (and word) on the web is copyrighted. Whether you are paying or not, consider who owns the copyright and expect that you need their permission to use their picture. Some images are not obviously copyrighted but they are protected. Web etiquette requires permission to use anything that is not yours and which does not obviously state: take it, use it, it's okay with me and I'm the authority. There are some sites that do offer this freedom, but only a few and generally only for personal, non-commercial use. Bear in mind that different countries have different copyright laws.
Terms to be familiar with
Public domain - pictures in the public domain are copyright free. In the United States, many government-produced images are in the public domain. Those materials created privately generally pass into the public domain 70 years after the death of the creator - but this is only a portion of the law. Details of recent changes are described in a chart constructed by Peter B. Hirtle, of the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections. http://cidc.library.cornell.edu/copyright/
Fair use is a federal law allowing that the use of materials for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. There are many limitations and details to consider. Indiana University's Copyright Management Center provides comprehensive, digestible guidelines.
Royalty free means you pay a one-time fee to use a photograph as many times and ways as you choose.
Licensed or rights-protected images are purchased photographs accompanied by a contract stating how the pictures can be used and for what period of time. Examples and further definition can be found on most stock sites, including these simple explanations on GettyOne and alamy.com.
Comp images are images provided for designing a “composite” or first draft layout, to see which images work the best. Most commercial stock agencies offer free low resolution comp downloads, to use for a limited period of time.
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stock photography | cultural collections | US government | free! | other resources
Remember that online collections generally reflect only a portion of an organization's materials. If you really can't find what you want online, and have a bit of time, most commercial and non-profit repositories offer access to their full holdings via email or phone, and can provide you with actual prints or transparencies for scanning.
Commercial agencies offering high quality images for purchase. Many offer low resolution images free for composite work-ups and use on personal web sites.
Top 10 Links lists and provide links to these “top” 20 stock agencies, some of which are also described below. Some of these sites offer images for web use for as little as $19!
Photosphere has professionally produced images for as low as $30 each (royalty free). Offers thematic collections on CD, site is searchable by keyword. Free comps and use on personal web sites
PictureQuest is a portal for searching over 400,000 stock and royalty free images from 50 providers, including licensed and royalty free images from some of the best stock agencies with content ranging from news photography to historic imagery to advertising to social issues.
Timepix offers images for non-commercial use in exchange for registration. Classic US photojournalism.
1StopStock Photography Search provides a keyword search of 10 major stock photography agencies. Images are ordered directly from each agency. Comstock, Photovision, Corbis, Photostone, Imagebank and FPG.
Archive Photos maintains one of the largest and most comprehensive historical photo still libraries in the world, with more than 20,000,000 photographs, engravings and drawings representing nearly every subject from the beginning of civilization to the present day.
gettyone.com provides 200,000 licensed and royalty-free images from 8 distinct “brands” (each “brand” is owned by them). Images range from commercial to historic to editorial. Great quality, well-maintained pictures. Free comps.
PhotoDisc provides a large collection of royalty free, hi-res, digital stock photography. Free comps.
Stock Directory is an online resource of unusual and unique images as well as more standard views of subjects ranging from castles to space exploration. Offers an online quote service for your project.
Foto Search searches multiple stock agencies from one site.
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This list is a smattering of collections, both large and small. There are hundreds more, see the resources section for avenues to other repositories.
The New York Public Library holds thousands of original photographs, color transparencies and book images from the Research Libraries. Online images include Lewis Hine's labor photographs, stereographic views of small town America, images of African Americans. Downloads are for personal use only, all other uses must contact NYPL.
The Drexel ArchivesThe Drexel University Archives Photography Collection provides a small collection of pre-1920 photographs of campus life online for use by Drexel University faculty, staff, and students.
The National Archives and Records Administration provides online access to a fraction of their holdings. Photographs, many of which are in the public domain, can be found on these sites:
