Where Can You Find FREE Photos and Illustrations?

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Even though I am an avid photographer, taking often several hundred images a month, from time to time the need for a certain motive arises.  The question was, where can I find inexpensive photographs?  A lot of research brought up a handful of online offers that I like to share with you. Maybe you need a certain image for your website, your blog or your book.  Please see some websites below that provide good deals on royalty-free photographs or even free ones.

But what is the difference between free, royalty-free and rights-managed?

Free images can be downloaded without any rules or agreement and are in the public domain. The creator offers his work public and free, there are no legal rights or restrictions for his or her work and it can be duplicated.  Images which have been copyrighted can still be considered as free when they are explicitly announced by the artist to be used, copied, distributed or modified.

Royalty-free images are given the right to use. There is an agreement that the licensee can use the photo without paying additional royalty charges, but it does not mean that the licensee can use the image for what ever he/she wants.

Rights Managed images means a contract between the licencor and licensee, regarding licensing the rights to use photographs, specifying to use the content in a certain way. This can include the length of time, the medium, the size, the format and the location of use. Unlike images under royalty-free licenses, the licencor is in control or has history of the rights granted involving the image.
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FREE IMAGE SOURCES

I am only on page 15 of about 3,000 pages of free photos and have downloaded dozens of beautiful images that I can use for websites, books and yes, also for this blog. This is the best of all websites I found so far:

http://www.morguefile.com

An amazing hidden treasure on the internet, ten, no hundred thousands of free images (almost 300,000) and you are allowed to copy, distribute, transmit and to adapt the work. No “accounts” necessary as on other websites, just go to “free photos”, choose an image and download it.
Some of the photos are in such a high resolution that you can use them for your book cover image.
A real treasure trove!

http://www.Flickr.com

http://www.Freedigitalphotos.net

http://www.deviantArt.com

http://www.istockphoto.com

http://www.dreamstime.com

http://www.shutterstock.com

http://www.fotosearch.com/

http://www.photogen.com

http://www.imageafter.com/images.php

http://www.stockvault.net/

http://www.sxc.hu/

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As you browse, pull any images that catch your eye. Don’t assume you’ll be able to return to that page later. Chances are, you’ll never find it again. (most sites are constantly rotating, to show new images) – save the ones you like and cull them later. 

What is your favored website for free photos?

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar

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Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 740 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following our social media sites:

@111publishing

http://pinterest.com/111publishing/

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Pingates

 

How to Use Photos on the Internet

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Antique Rolleiflex Camera

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My largest visitor stream I ever got on any blog was via Google Image Search. People were looking for a certain image on Google and found my website. The photo had the right size, motive and it was named with the right keywords.
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Improve SEO through your photos
There is more to it, than just placing attractive photos on your blog or website. Here are some tips how you can optimize your photos to improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and to get more traffic to your website or blog.
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Reduce the file size of your photos
NOT the dimensions of the image, but the pixel size. When you re-size a photo manually in WordPress (for example) you only change the dimensions, and the amount of pixel stays almost the same. A file size of 1.8 MB can be easily reduced to 300 Kb without compromising the quality for the viewer. Adobe Photoshop or Adobe “Lightroom” software can be used to re-size the photo’s pixels – not the dimension! Important: Make a copy of your original photo BEFORE you re-size. Otherwise it would be lost forever and you would keep only the lower pixel version. There is no way back!
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Name your photos
File593730.jpg or DSC_8405037.jpg is not helpful to you and totally meaningless to search engines. Keywords in the photos name should be separated by hyphens, NOT underscores, and shouldn’t be squeezed into a single word, e.g. Antique-Leica-Camera.jpg.
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Always use ALT tags
Wordpress makes it easy for you when adding photos to your text. The fields for Title, Description, ALT and caption are build-in, so you can fill them out easily. Search engines can’t “see” photos, but “read” keywords, that describes your image. Keywords that you use on your web page should work together with the keywords you use for your images.
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Where to find inexpensive photos?
You might be an avid photographer, just like me, taking often several hundred images a month. However, from time to time the need for a certain motive arises, and the question is, where to turn to for inexpensive images for a blog or a web site? A lot of research brought up a handful of online offers that I like to share with you.
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Find websites in these articles that provide good deals on royalty-free photographs or even free ones. If you don’t know the difference between royalty-free and free photos, take the time to read these articles thoroughly.
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Where to find free photos and illustrations?

Part II of Free Image Sources

Part III of Free Image Sources

Part IV Free – Inexpensive Photo Sources

Why Steal When You Can Get it for Free ?

5 Laws Writers Should Know to Avoid Getting Sued

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 700 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://pinterest.com/111publishing/

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

Don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks

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Pingates

 

How to Market your Book on Photo Sites

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You know Flickr as a photo storing and sharing site, but did you know you can use it to market your book there? Not to advertise, this would be against their terms of use and would block your account. But there is a subtle way to introduce your book on photo sharing sites, comparable to showing your book – including inside-illustrations – on Pinterest.

• Start by commenting regularly on Flickr and telling people what you like about their images. Be encouraging and invite people to the Flickr groups you joined.
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• Embed links to your Flickr site in photos you use on blogs, share it on social media sites such as Twitter, Google+, FB, Tumblr, StumpleUpon and Chime.in. Doing this draws visitors on third-party sites to your Flickr page. Pinterest for sample has recently made a feature that allows sharing from Flickr, automatically showing proper credit and a link back to the original photographer. No copyright and fair use problems anymore.
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• Tagging and grouping photos: You can use up to 75 tags to describe your photo of the book cover, way more than on Amazon or any other page for that matter. 75 tags are a lot of possibilities to let people know about your book! Organize your work into collections on your profile page. Group them based on common themes, formats or any other elements. Don’t forget to add notes to explain or comment right on your photo, e.g. mentioning your book.
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• If you want to see your images gaining a wider audience, start offering a few of them for fair use – especially your book cover photo or snippets of the cover image. Blogs and sharing sites are always on the lookout for royalty free images they can use.
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• For only about $25 you can have a professional account from Flickr, an official icon showing that you are a pro user, which actually adds more credibility in the community. You also get enhanced features, such as unlimited photos, video or HD video capabilities. Having a professional account on Flickr allows you to post a photo in up to 60 user group pools, unlike a free account that only allows you to put each photo in ten user groups.
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• Flickr is not the only site where you can show images of your book and its topics. Find a list of the best photo sharing sites on Social Times or on Wickipedia where you can even find the number of registered members and their Alexa Web Ranking.
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Flickr is popular, both for personal and professional use. For the average photographer, it has limitless potential for self promotion and sharing. Photos are easy to embed with links and author names, and can be found on WikiMedia Commons for example, they always have a lot of Flickr images shown there. Start increasing your own authors visibility and these of your books through photo posting on Flickr.
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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts (there are more than 500 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it.

There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter,Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful.

Thanks, Doris

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Pingates

 

5 Ways of Marketing with Pinterest

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PINTEREST, an image-based social networking platform is growing at record speed. Direct sales content is not allowed at Pinterest, according to their Terms of Service. However, this doesn’t mean businesses can’t get creative and use Pinterest for brand-building and to drive revenue. Here are five creative ways to use Pinterest as a platform for indirect marketing purposes in your social media marketing mix. It’s free and easy to use.

The visual aspect offers great opportunities for authors to connect with readers by “pinning” their book cover images and illustrations from within their book.
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1. Create several pinboards
Depending on the story of your book, you could create custom product pinboards that indirectly market through topics of your book. For example, when you wrote a historical novel, you can create a pinboard with historical photographs of the area, where the novel takes place and a pinboard about events happening at the time. A pinboard about the characters… etc. Or if you wrote a thriller, set in the financial sector, pin images of Wall Street or offices of investment bankers. However be careful to show images of persons only after getting their written! consent.  Images of Banks such as Merrill Lynch, Rothschild or Bank of America are ok.

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You could also create a pinboard, showing images of your old typewriter, a pile of notes, your laptop, cute writing paper with a pretty pen, you – sitting on your desk and writing or you – at a book signing or giving a talk.. you get the idea.  And always add a cover image of your book, including an mage of the back side if it is a paper book, to EACH of these pinboards.

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2. Informal Market Research
Use Pinterest to show several drafts of the cover images of your next book. Ask visitors to share their thoughts through comments and vote for their favored image. Encourage them to invite their friends on Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, FB or LinkedIn to partizipate and give an e-book version of the upcoming book as prize drawing for the most popular cover image, choosen by them. You can also ask for feedback on illustrations, video, your book trailer, ads, and much more.

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3. Create a Contest
Contests can get really creative on Pinterest. You could hold a contest for the best image story, pinned by a Pinterest user / customer taking
images of your books or photos to create it. You could ask people to pin images to Pinterest as part of your contest.

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4. Video Pinboards
When publishing How-to videos on YouTube or on your business blog, pin it on Pinterest and share that useful content. Create a pinboard for all of your helpful content to give it broader exposure.

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5. Promote Your Pinboards
Cross-promote the content you publish on Pinterest pinboards – on your blog, Twitter, Google+ and other social media profiles – and vice versa, your social media appearance on Pinterest pinboards. Help your potential customers to spread the word by putting a button “Follow Me on Pinterest” to your website/blog as well as a “Pin It” button. It’s an easy way for people to pin your image or your video with a single mouse click. You can install these buttons within seconds; it makes your content more shareable.

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Excerpt from the brand new e-book: ***** 111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer ***** featuring valuable tips and links to video tutorials, free music downloads and free images, available on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y15YYO

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How to Create Excitement Regarding Your New Book:

Once your book is finished and is in your editors hands to be “fine-tuned” you can use the time to prepare for your book launch and to improve even more your marketing efforts:

• Transfer your book cover-photo to Pinterest.com and Flickr.com and other free-photo pages with a link to your website.
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• Create a short book trailer for YouTube, using images, words or even scenes from your book*
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• Write about your upcoming book launch and post small bits and pieces
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• Get Marketing help at Fiverr.com
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• Ask your friends to “Thumbs up” & “Listmania” your book on Amazon
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• Announce your new book to the Independent Authors Forum
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• Let your followers on Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media know about the books “birth”.
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• Create as many free Author Pages as possible, on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, Wattpad etc.
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• Join even more forums, such as Kindle Forum or the AbsoluteWrite Forum
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• Set up e-Book Launches:

An e-book launch is when you get several (at least 10 – 15) website owners together to promote YOUR e-book all on the same day to their lists by sending out an email or write an article on their blog. The idea of a book launch is to turn the publication of the book into an event.

The key is to find the right joint-venture partners who can get your ebook in front of a lot of targeted traffic, readers who are interested in the kind of book you are selling. Each of your partners gives a bonus that buyers can get when they purchase, which allows your partners to collect names and emails and build their lists with buyers who are more valuable to them than prospects.

*Find more ideas in the brand new e-book: ***** 111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer ***** featuring valuable tips and links to video tutorials, free music downloads and free images, available on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y15YYO

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“Why e-Books Will Be Much Bigger Than You Can Imagine”

Photo Trey Ratcliff http://www.stuckincustoms.com

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Just found this sometimes hilarious story on an internet blog by Trey Ratcliff:

“I am sitting there in a nice restaurant in San Francisco with all these executives of a major publishing house. It’s one of these power dinners of lore. We are to discuss the upcoming launch of my book, and I’ll never forget what happened. They asked me, “OK, Trey, what are you going to do to market this book?”  You could have knocked me over with a feather. My young publishing life flashed in front of my eyes…

I ended up putting together a robust launch campaign. Luckily I already had hundreds of thousands of people who came to the blog every month, a healthy Twitter following (this is before Google+) and a great network of people to help.

I did everything, including:

• Put together a limited-edition print along with a signed copy of the book for early orders. This required me to warehouse the book with a third party, pay for massive shipping, and have a ping-pong table covered in books for two weeks while I signed all of them along with the prints, etc.
• Organize a book tour (at my own expense) to hit several big cities like New York and Chicago.
• Blog and tweet about it on countless occasions.
• Sneak into hundreds of Barnes & Nobles, secretly sign my books, then tweet out the location so a little flash mob would appear to get the special signed version. (BTW, this got me thrown out of at least three bookstores by short-sighted managers.)

The book came out and did amazing. It sold out on Amazon in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. It takes a lot to sell out a book on Amazon! The book was reprinted and moved into the black within the first quarter.”

Read more: “Why e-books will be much bigger than you can imagine” (well, IF you do the marketing…)  by Trey Ratcliff, his own website is http://www.stuckincustoms.com/trey-ratcliff/

Not only a writer, teacher, landscape photographer, film maker and photo teacher, here a glimpse into his HDR photo teaching.  Even the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC shows his work!

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Why Steal When You Can Get it for Free ?

Expecting that nobody will notice if you make use of an image that you just take without permission is foolish, tools like TinEye make it free and easy to find who has used an image without permission, and stock agencies like getty and others use paid services like picscout.com track image misuse, bill the offender, taking legal action if images are not removed.

If you are using images without the correct license, someone will catch up with you sooner or later. here’s a typical forum quote “I currently have a demand from getty images for $1200 over an image I hot-linked to in a blog entry 2 years ago.“

Check out this extensive list of resources, providing free stock photos with a table of comparisons:
http://budgetstockphoto.com/free_stock_photos.html

 

 

Copyright and Fair Use of Online Images

Do you understand the term fair use?
Just because you provide attribution and/or a link back to the original doesn’t mean you’re free and clear. Fair use has nothing to do with attribution. That’s an issue related to plagiarism – different from copyright.

A classic example of fair use of an image to use online is product reviews. If you want to review a book, a new piece of technology, a food product or whatever widget, you’ll likely want to include a photo.

Fair use basically means you’re allowed to infringe on someone’s copyright and they can’t do anything about it. If your use is covered by fair use, you don’t have to provide attribution anyway (although it would be nice). The question is:

• Why are you using the image?
• Did you transform the image?
• How much of the image are you using?
• Are you willing to risk your site being taken down?

Read the whole article here:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/copyright-fair-use-and-how-it-works-for-online-images/

 

 

 

Kickstart Your Project

SourcePDPhoto.org

Raise Seeding Funds

I just stumpled over this website – and got hooked by a marvelous garden project, Aurora Borealis Public Garden, in Providence, RI. 

To donate funds, starting at $1, people can use either their credit card or their standing Amazon account.

Kickstarter is a funding platform focused on a broad spectrum of creative projects. – albums, films, specific works – that have clearly defined goals and expectations.

Only projects with a creative purpose.
Kickstarter can be used to fund projects from the creative fields of Art, Comics, Dance, Design, Fashion, Film, Food, Games, Music, Photography, Publishing, Technology, and Theater. We currently only support projects from these categories.

Defining Your Project
Whether it’s a book, a film, or a piece of hardware, the one trait that every Kickstarter campaign shares is that it is a project. Defining what your Kickstarter project is is the first step for every creator.

What are you raising funds to do? Having a focused and well-defined project with a clear beginning and end is vital. For example: recording a new album is a finite project — the project finishes when the band releases the album — but launching a music career is not. Kickstarter is open only to finite projects. With a precisely defined goal, expectations are transparent for both the creator and potential backers. Backers can judge how realistic the project’s goals are.

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Got any ideas???

 

 

Part IV Free – Inexpensive Photo Sources

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am sure you have read my former blogs about totally FREE images, today’s listing is starting with very inexpensive photo sources, down to the mid- and high-end photo providers. At the end of todays blog see the explanation for “royalty-free” and “rights-managed” images.

http://www.bigstockphoto.com
An inventory of more than 2 million images is a good place to search for photos. Prices are very low if you buy purchase credit blocs, starting at $0.99 or $2.99 for purchases “as you go”.

http://www.dreamstime.com/
Their site is available in several languages, such as German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and it says: “Search among 11 million photos”. Images are ranging from free – although very few – to $5 or more. If you buy their credits in bulk, photos can be as low as 20 cents an image.

http://www.fotolia.com
Fotolia has access to more than 14 million images, subscription photos start at $ 0.16 for very small photos or as a single purchase from $0.75.

http://www.jupiterimages.com
2,5 million royalty-free stock photos, retrieved from more than 50 images sites including Getty images. The site is available in eight languages, even in Japanese, and with prices in their currency. http://www.istockphoto.com High quality images in a huge selection. Most images are between $1-$5 and you can buy credits in blocks. They have royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, videos and website backgrounds.

http://www.clipart.com/
By subscription only!!! For $15 one can download up to 250 images per week, a 1-year subscription is only $160 = more than 12.000 photos! They have more than 10 million pieces of royalty-free photos, clip art, Web graphics, illustrations and fonts that are available via subscription.

 

And here are the mid- to high-end prized photos:

http://www.fotosearch.com
10 Million rights-managed and royalty-free photographs and illustrations from more than 90 publishers around the world.  Images start at $50 and go up from there and are available on CD or via download.

http://www.gettyimages.com
They were the first stock photo company going online in 1995 with its catalogue and images. Getty Images has an inventory of more than 24 million images and is a source for many newspapers and media outlets, but also has affordable stock photography beginning at $50.

http://www.matton.com
Outstanding photographs for the higher end digital media market, even so their value images start at $15 and many of their royalty-free images can be purchased for use on the web, starting at $50. They also offer a great variety of maps as images.

Royalty Free Images
These images are images can be used multiple times, for almost any usage Royalty-Free image pricing is based only on size (not usage) and there are never additional fees for using the image.

Rights-Managed Images
Means: licensed for a specific use. The fee for these images is calculated from several factors including size, placement, duration, and geographic location. Rights-managed images are licensed for a specific use and cannot be used for any other purpose, e.g. if you bought them for a book cover, you cannot use them for a magazine article.