Finding Digital Images

A picture is worth a thousand words....where do you find pictures for presentations or video projects? You can go to Google, type in a few search terms and do an image search. You will find images, but there might be legal issues with using these images. You cannot just take an image that is someone else's creative product and use it. For a one time use that will not be made public, you can probably use the image with appropriate footnoting. However, the best solution is to find images that have a Creative Commons license and are available for use without charge for non-commercial purposes. Although there are different types of Creative Commons licenses requiring you to do different things to use the photo in your project, most only require an attribution giving credit to the author of the photo (more about that later.) If you find a photo that you like in Wikopedia, you can typically click on the picture to go to a page that will tell you if the photo is free for you to use. You can find Creative Commons photos by using the advanced search options of Google and Yahoo (click links for more information on how to do this.)

Another great source for images is Flickr. This post will discuss Flickr because I think it could provide some useful materials for a number of you. I did a really quick search for images using broad search terms for a few of your video topics. I found groups of images for tidal power, wind power, nuclear power, hydroelectric, fuel cell transport, biomass, geothermal. For some of the other topics, I am sure you would be able to find pictures that would be useful to you.

Flickr is a photo-sharing site that allows to you upload your own photos and add comments, descriptions and tags to them to make sharing more useful. Flickr is also a place where you can go to find photos that other people have uploaded. In this post, we will look at how to use Flickr for finding free images to use. In a later entry, we will look at how you can use Flickr to store and share photos that you might take with a camera while working on your projects. There is a very nice video screencast that gives you the rudiments of searching Flickr for photos to use in a project

In order to use Flickr to acquire images that other people have uploaded, you are not required to generate a Flickr account. However, you will have a lot more search flexibility if you do sign up for a free account. You can access Flicker at www.flickr.com. From this homepage you can either create an account or directly enter search terms into the search box. If you scroll down the homepage a bit, you will see an explore choice. If you click on that choice, you will be transported to the Explore page. You will see a search box on this page that links to "geo-tagged" images. If you type a specific location in the box, your search will return a map with links to photos taken at that location. These are the features you can use without a Flickr account. Flickr is owned by Yahoo. If you already have a Yahoo ID and password that you use to access some other Yahoo service, you can sign in and will already have a free Flickr account alloted to you.

When you log in with a Flickr account, you will get the page from which you begin basic searching via the search box. You can type in your search terms, and then using the drop down menu, choose where you would like to search. . There are two ways to search Flickr pictures. First is to search image titles and descriptions, and the second is to search the tags that people have attached to their photos. On the search page that will be returned, you will have the option of filtering the pictures by description/title or tags. For our example we have searched for photos that have tags of Iceland geothermal. There were 144 images found. There are two ways to display the images either as a mosaic of thumbnails or in a listing with some details about each picture.

From either form, clicking on an image will bring up the page for that image with any descriptions, the tags, copyright information, link to the photographer's other photos, etc. If you click on this link, you can see the anatomy of a Flickr photo page. However, this search will return pictures having all levels of copyright protection. Unless the picture you wish to use is published under a Creative Commons license, you need to get permission to use the picture in your project, or you may be infringing on someone's copyright.

Creative Commons (CC) is a license that allows an author, artist, educator, etc to specify how their work may be used. It defines a spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain, i.e., from all rights reserved to no rights reserved. Many of the photographs on Flickr have Creative Commons licenses. The most useful license for you is the CC-Attribution license. This licensing allows you to use the photo, and all you have to do in return is give the photographer an attribution (credit). Other photos may only allow use in non commercial works. Some allow you to edit the photos while others may allow you to freely use the picture as long as you do not alter it. Other photos on Flickr may have all rights reserved so you can't use it without permission.

When you look at the fully detailed page for a particular photograph, you will see the copyright information about that photo given in the lower right part of the page. In this particular example, there are some copyright restrictions. The symbols tell you what the restrictions are. For this example, you may not use the image in a commercial product. You can find the details of the different levels of Creative Commons and the symbols for those levels detailed here.

If you don't want to look at an entire group of picture finding one you like only to learn it has all rights reserved so you can't use it without permission, you can use the advanced search option (click Advanced Search next to the search box at the top of the page). You will get an entire page of different criteria that you can specify in your search. If you scroll down the page, you will come to the criteria that allow you to specify that the photos be in the Creative Commons or that the pictures be alterable.. When adding this to our Iceland Geothermal search, we get a lesser number of pictures from which to choose. You still need to check the level of Creative Commons to make sure you can use the picture in a legal manner, but none will have all rights reserved. Here is a picture of the Blue Lagoon which is heated by the geothermal effluent from a geothermal powerplant which can be used with attribution in non-commercial projects. For more information, read this article on "How to Rock Flickr Like a Champ".

Many museums, organizations and libraries have images that they have made either public domain (no copyright so free to use in any way) or have Creative Commons copyright. Here are a couple more links that you might find useful:

• Public Domain Images from Burningwell

• Q&A response from the New York Times