Three Great Sources for Truly Free Art
It's always nice to add an image or two to your posts. Pictures convey emotion, illustrate your point, and provide a break from the wall of text. And with image searches at your fingertips, it seems like the easiest thing to find the exact photo you want for your article.
However, not all images are available for general use. Stock photos can be incredibly expensive, as they are often intended to be used in print by companies that pay for high-resolution versions of each image. "Royalty-free" also is a misleading term, meaning that the piece can be used without paying royalties for each use…but this doesn't mean the image itself is free. A royalty-free image can cost hundreds of dollars up front. Using art created by someone else without their permission is a violation of copyright, even if it seems like the artist is no longer active online or you can't find the original artist at all. But all is not lost--check out these great resources for truly free art.
Free Digital Photos
For conceptual artwork and clean, modern photography, check out freedigitalphotos.net. They are a real stock photo website that offers web-friendly images free for business, personal, charitable or educational use. You can always purchase larger, hi-res versions, but this is not necessary for the typical blogger. All of the photos are included, and the site is set up with well-defined categories such as Business, Food & Drink, Architecture, and more. There's a keyword search as well to help you narrow your search.
Even better, they have a selection of icon sets and backgrounds that can enhance your site further with a pulled-together look.
Stock.XCHNG
Much like Freedigitalphotos.net, Stock.XCHNG offers thousands of free stock images for use in your website or blog. In addition, they feature tutorials and resources in the form of a blog community. To use the site, you need to create a login. Stock.XCHNG is affiliated with iStockphoto.
Free Art in the Public Domain
Another great way to find free images for your website is to look at Public Domain works. These are images that are either no longer under copyright or license, or never were as their creators died before copyright law was introduced. Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is perhaps the most famous image in the Public Domain.
One benefit to using Public Domain images is that many of them will lend a richness to your site that a new stock photo cannot. Public Domain works come from all eras, even from the modern day, so look at sites such as PublicPhoto.org or Wikimedia Commons for thousands upon thousands of available images.
If you do choose a Public Domain image that is not found on a clearly marked website for public domain, make sure that the version you are using is not copyrighted. The Mona Lisa may be public domain, but someone's vacation photograph of the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre is not. Nor is a version of the Mona Lisa that someone changed in Photoshop or similar program. Those versions of the image are the property of the person who made the changes.