umm... a camera. Or, you can find pictures online that don't have any royalties on them. This site has a bunch of links to different sites with royalty free images. Or you could just type royalty free pictures into the search here on dp and im sure you will find thousands.
I also watch for CDs in office and discount stores that have 50,000 royalty free images. These typically are higher resolution if you need it and they are inexpensive. $5-$10 each.
I need pictures of earliest Xmas ornaments. My article about earliest Christmas ornaments and the tradition to decorate a Xmas tree in different countries.
I suggest you join a couple of picture forums, like this one - http://www.digitalpictureforum.com/ And post some request. Sometimes all you have to do is ask in the right places and you might find what you are looking for.
Since you are going to publish the piece do find a legit source for the stock photography as suggested above. The idea that you find photographer forums and ask is also clever. Another approach may be to contact a company that has been in the ornament business for a long time - in exchange for credit/link their PR department might supply the images you need for free out of their archive. That is common practice for the legit press. Just present your request to them professionally. HTH
check for some royalty free pics, just google it. you can also go to flickr and search, but be kind enough to attribute the photo in your article. contacting the photo's owner might also give you express permission to use their photos. for free.
The best place to get the most fabulous pictures regarding any content on earth -www.google.com\images No matter how rare the artefact, there has to be a picture somewhere in this search engine. :]
GOOGLE IMAGE SOURCE IS NOT A FREE IMAGE RESOURCE!!! Google has simply indexed the photos and artwork it finds on websites to make it easier to find websites about those topics. It was not designed to be a free image resource although the last two posts here prove why the concept was flawed from the beginning. Most of the images in the Google image search are copyrighted and you could be sued for using them without permission.
www.sxc.hu An excellent site for Royalty free photos or find threads of royalty free photos on digitalpoint and other forums
Are you necessarily looking for free images? Office online has free clipart that you can use. I also suggest using fotolia.com or istockphoto.com for pictures you can purchase for cheap.
For your blog, assuming this is where you plan to use photos. you can try free photodropper plugin. All you need to do is check the 'for-profit' box, the plug-in lets you browse and select Flicker photos that are free for anyone to use for commercial purposes.
Wikipedia is a good source of free copyright free images. Or you can go on Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket...search...and contact the author if you can use what you've found.