Jessica Crabtree

Flickr: Jessica Crabtree – Autumn 2011

I’ve just uploaded a new set of photos to my Flickr photostream. I’ve been remiss in posting them; as a matter of fact I still have a few sets from this summer that I haven’t added yet.

If fall is your favorite season (as it is mine) then I hope you will enjoy browsing through them as much as I enjoyed taking them. As always, if you see any of them that you like, feel free to download/use them online or in your next project, no permission required – just pass along the favor.

Visit my photostream:

What I believe is a golden-crowned kinglet in a black willow tree.

Kinglets are extremely small songbirds similar to warblers, with sprightly, inquisitive personalities (like this one!) They prefer the habitat of coniferous forests. The photo is mine (public domain).

Photo: Public domain

Click to see the full-size view – I never knew turtles had such interesting eyes.
See more of my free photos on my companion blog, Public Domain Nature Photos.

This interactive gallery features decades worth of image collections from NatGeo’s nature, travel, and history archives. (A lot of fun for photographers, nature lovers, or history buffs like me.)

National Geographic: Image Collection

Tip: If you’re looking for photos to reuse or reproduce, keep in mind NatGeo’s images are copyright restricted. Check out my Links page for a number of public domain and royalty-free photo resources.

(Screenshot: click for larger view)

Announcing the launch of my new Public Domain Photo blog!

My album of completely free stock photos is now live! The collection consists entirely of nature photos, i.e. landscapes. flowers, trees, insects, and wildlife (still in progress). All of the photos I’ve taken myself and released into the public domain. Browse through the easy-to-use gallery for your enjoyment or to find just the right photo for your next art project.

Public domain means they’re totally free for commercial and non-commercial purposes. You are free to copy, modify, or adapt these photos for web design, blogs, desktops, reference pictures, cards, paintings, sketches – whatever you like – no strings attached.

The only restriction is that you must pass along the favor – you may not restrict others from using the same free image by selling the original file, or by placing your copyright on the original. You don’t have to give source credit when using any of my photos – but a return link or feedback is always nice!

Let me point out that this is still a work in progress. I’m just starting out so the collection is rather small, but is expanding quickly, so be sure to add it to favorites and check back often. And by all means, share it with a friend! As always if you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line.

Jessica

PUBLIC DOMAIN NATURE PHOTOS: www.jessicacrabtree.com/pdphoto

“Guilty!”
This is what a squirrel looks like when he’s caught on a bird feeder…

(By the way, the photo’s mine, and I’m releasing it to the public domain – which means if you like it, you can do what you want with it – modify it, use it as a reference photo, post it elsewhere – no strings attached. Just be sure to pass the favor on.)

Today there’s an ocean of photo material available on the internet through open image searches. Some of it is deliberately posted as multi-purpose content, while much of it is gleaned from personal websites by search engines such as Google Images or Bing. In response, there’s a new breed of legal classification for visual/photo art designed to help specify the legal status of a work. A photographer can designate his work under a rights-managed license to specify exactly how much or how little restriction he wishes to place on the use of his photos. This is much more flexible than copyright but is still legally binding. The licenses range in strictness from the traditional “All Rights Reserved” to completely unrestricted “Public Domain.”

The most frequent rights-managed licenses are known as Creative Commons licenses. Most of the photos you see on Flickr or Wikipedia, for example, will be under this kind of license. Anyone who accesses a work under a Creative Commons license can easily find out exactly what level of use is permitted by its author. So if a photographer submits a photo on the web for completely unrestricted use, he licenses it as public domain. If he wants to be given credit in any future use of his photos, he can license it under a Creative Commons Attribution license. He may choose a license which allows any use of his photos except commercial or resale, or a Non-Derivative license, which grants free use but stipulates that the image be unaltered.

Some basic info on Creative Commons licenses:

http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft

What’s “royalty-free”?

Artists searching for reference material on the internet run across many collections listed as “free photos” or “royalty-free” – but this can be something of a catch-22. These terms are NOT equivalent to public domain (i.e., unrestricted use). Generally, royalty-free just means that you don’t have to pay a leasing fee for using the photo, and that intellectual copyright still applies. This is to differentiate them from websites that actually sell stock photos under varying usage licenses. Most free-photo sites will have disclaimers saying that their photos are “100% free” to download, but are restricted to personal or educational uses only. Granted, this is fair, but it’s easy to be misled by thinking that “free” is an all-encompassing term. Check the source to find out just what is meant by “free.”

If you intend to draw heavily on any kind of visual reference material for commercial art (that is, art you intend to sell) make sure to do the research to confirm that it is public domain, or get the owner’s permission.

Next: Rights-Managed and Creative Commons