Finding photos to use online

Creative Commons licenses are a popular way for photographers to give open permission for anyone, including tourism groups, to use their photos, with certain restrictions. You may see the phrase “Creative Commons,” the (CC) abbreviation, or one of the Creative Commons badges, or the phrase, “Some rights reserved.”

So, what are the “certain restrictions” I mentioned? The photographer can choose to require any or all of these limits:

• attribution
• share alike
• non-commercial
• no derivative works

A full description of each of these restrictions is on the Creative Commons license page.

To know which limits are required, you have to look at the license where the photo is posted. On Flickr, there is a “License” to the right of every photo. If it says “All rights reserved,” you have to ask for permission before using the photo in any way. If it says “Some rights reserved,” that is a link you can click to read the full license and restrictions.

The best place to look for Creative Commons licensed photos is Flickr. Here are two ways to do that.

1. Use the Flickr Advanced Search, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You’ll see the Creative Commons logo. You can search only for photos you can use commercially, or only ones that allow you to edit them. If you check all three boxes, the search will return only photos that require attribution only. You can use these photos for commercial purposes and you can modify them as needed.

This is how I find my Brag Basket photos each week. I give the photographer credit by including “Photo (CC) by (photographer)” and link back to their photo page on Flickr. The (CC) indicates its a Creative Commons licensed photo.

2. Use Photopin. Photopin gives you a graphical search of photos with Creative Commons licenses at Flickr. Then it makes it easy to use the photo by giving easy download links and a pre-written photo credit to include in your story.

You do have to be careful because after the search results load, after a pause, new results load at the top of the page that are “sponsored images.” These are stock photos that require payment to be used. You’ll know when you click one of these because it will take you to a stock photo site instead of Flickr. The “free to use” Creative Commons images that you want will move down the page, below a dashed line in the search results.

I used Photopin to find this terrific biking photo for this article. Here’s their suggested tag line:
photo credit: jimmyhere via photopin cc

Notice how Photopin gave themselves a link there? Yeah, that’s not my favorite way to do it. I think I’ll stick with Flickr’s own search.

Update, Jan 2018: Another source for Creative Commons licensed photos is PikWizard. Some of the photos are OK for commercial use, and some only for editorial use, like a news article or news-y blog post. There are options on every search to allow you to see only editorial use photos or exclude them.

Bonus points for tourism: 
Leave a comment on any Flickr photo you use. Tell the photographer how you used it, how it benefits your community, and then say thank you. Almost no one ever does this, so it’s a great way to stand out and maybe even build a good relationship with a talented photographer.

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