Hi, I am starting an online magazine and therefore naturally need photos. Is there are way that I can source photos quickly - that can be used for free ? I have seen the wiki explanation as to " fair use " policy etc etc and it does all seem a bit confusing ? Rgds - JB
I believe you can use public domain photos from places like wikipedia. You can click on any picture from wikipedia and find out if it's public domain, GPL, or copyrighted. Even with GPL, you still might be able to use the pictures in some manner. Also, I believe all photos taken by the U.S. government (non-military, of course) are in the public domain, which would make them free even for non-Americans. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), for instance, has taken millions of nature photos in the past 100 years.
Do a search on DP for public domain photo. This question has been asked many times and there are some good threads with links to other sites that have public domain photos. If you do the same search on Google, you will get lots of results. But many of the sites that say they have public domain photos are nothing but collections of images stolen from the net.
Be careful with wiki photos since some are uploaded claiming to be public domain only to be deleted later because of copyright violation.