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Lately, when I’m in need of pictures of an online project, whether it’s a blog post, an email, or a landing page, I’ve been turning more and more to creative commons licenced work over stock photo galleries. Using resources like the ones named in this post, you can quickly find the images you need without the hassle or expense of licensing. Flickr makes this even easier, with a “creative commons” tag  search you can add to your search queries which includes whether it can be used for commercial purposes (which I generally don’t need) or altered (which is more likely).

Creative Commons is built on the idea of both serving the public and protecting content creators:

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

But Creative Commons only works if people contribute to it - I know that my photos on Flickr are always tagged as free to alter, but not to use commercially - I’m happy if someone wants to use one in a blog post, but if they’re going to make a profit off of it, I’d like to share in that. There’s a benefit for the content creator not only in contributing to society’s openness in general, but also in getting work out there, attributed to them.

This certainly isn’t to say that commercial libraries don’t have their uses - if I need a high-resolution photo, or a very specific one, particularly if it needs to include people, I generally end up at iStockPhoto. But photo libraries carry a liability that many creative commons licensed photos do not: the greater likelyhood that the photo you’re using is also being used by your competitors, whether that’s other non-profits in your space, the corporation you’re protesting or just a commercial product that people are familiar with. Good photos in a stock library can be recognized as such by more than just you and sharing photos this way can remove some of your authenticity. With the greater variety of creative commons photos out there, it’s less likely than with commercial houses.

As both a content creator and a content consumer, consider using the creative commons licence. For more information on Creative Commons, check out the FAQ here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.