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Graphics Software

Contribute (And Use) Public Domain Images 52

Posted by timothy from the royalty-free dept.
summetj writes "BurningWell.org is a repository for public domain ("free-for-any-use") images. If you need a high resolution digital image for any use, Browse the Images. If you have produced any high-resolution images that you are willing to place in the public domain, please Read the Donors FAQ."
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Contribute (And Use) Public Domain Images More

Contribute (And Use) Public Domain Images

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  • We need more artists on board (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @07:41PM (#11195894) Journal
    I find that most of the artists I have observed are very possessive about their works. They are afraid of people passing their works off as others'; they are afraid of people redistributing their for-pay collections.

    I wonder how (or even if) some of the FOSS ideals better translate. (In other words, what's the best approach to get more of this group to start using the Creative Commons?)
    • I am not a photographer.

      But once in a blue moon I take a pciture that I know is good. And I share it.

      Photographers should be goons for hire for special ocassions, the way they should publish their power should be giving photogrpahs away for free, otherwise dumbsters like me that snap one decent picture every summer will eventually fill up the market of decent pictures ay way, so better these "artists" jump into the bandwagon before it looks suspicious them doing so.
    • create a site where you can license your photos via a creative commons license [creativecommons.org].

      one of those licenses probably has all the rights & restrictions you desire.

    • Re:We need more artists on board (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @10:18PM (#11196743) Homepage Journal
      "(In other words, what's the best approach to get more of this group to start using the Creative Commons?)"

      Texture images. A lot of 3D artists out there, including myself, bought a digital camera just for the sake of taking photos that become elements of textures for our final 3D work. Finding free textures on the web is a hassle, and most of us aren't so posessive of our texture images that we'd probably be likely to donate. At least, I can speak for myself. I'd be perfectly happy to share the photos I've taken if others would share theirs as well.
    • what's the best approach to get more of this group to start using the Creative Commons?

      Find a way to ensure that they can continue to make a decent living with photography as their primary occupation, and that they can afford the equipment they need to create their art. Otherwise, what's the point?
      • put their name on it. It's free advertising.
        • If they sell it, then they get paid and it's advertising. In case you hadn't noticed, professional artistic photographers don't advertise much beyond their galleries and their shows. Commercial photographers advertise all the time, but they are creating bespoke works that meet a certain need.

          Aside from which, a lot of photo usage licenses do require you to post the photographers name somewhere visible.

          This whole thing sounds like a solution in search of a problem, rather than what it should be, which is a
    • As a musician and sometimes-graphics artist, I wholeheartedly support Creative Commons and Free Software. However, there is a subtle difference between the two and I can understand why many artists reservations about giving their work away. With software, you clearly benefit by having open source because the program you are working on is continually improved. You share those improvements. A photograph or illustration (for instance) is unlikely to be improved. Or rather it is unlikely that the creator will s
      • Whoops posted this originally as an Anonymous coward (disregard the previous posting). Sorry /. :)

        As bad as this sounds, this is where the original spirit for DRM lies. We all too often look at the negative side of legislation but when it comes down to it, if properly deployed, a DRM solution would insure the issue of giving artists their due. Unfortunatly DRM is currently being used for scorched earth campaigns that do not benefit the consumer.
        If properly deployed and developed (here is the hard part) DRM
  • There was something I remember Lawrence Lessig talking about... hrm, now what was it... oh! I remember! It was a repository for public domain images called the Creative Commons [creativecommons.org]. What was this article about again?

    • Re:what was that thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @08:43PM (#11196290) Homepage
      Creative Commons licensing and public domain are two completely different things. They're mutually exclusive. If something is public domain, nobody has any rights over it, and therefore there's no way to impose a license on someone who wants to copy it.

      Generally in the free information world, there are two parallel communities, one doing PD (usually of stuff so old that there was no choice about making it PD) and one doing copyleft. For example, when it comes to books, Project Gutenberg and the Book People mailing list are on the PD side, while theassayer.org (see my sig) concentrates more on copylefted modern books. They're not redundant or competitive, they're complimentary.

  • ...does that change the status of the image?

    (I'd not want to see a similar product
    being advertised under tha same image.)

    Do we have a lawyer in the audience? ;-)

  • Other free photography/imagery sites (Score:3, Informative)

    by JeffHunt ( 129508 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @08:52PM (#11196351) Homepage
    Don't forget http://www.sxc.hu and http://www.morguefile.com

  • And exactly how do artists justify this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by human bean ( 222811 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @10:00PM (#11196668)
    Been there, done that, got what would have been the tee-shirt if it had paid enough to afford one.

    An artist lives off of selling their time in the form of their art. There is only so much of it per day, and an artist has to pick and choose what he/she is going to do, as there are always way more ideas than time.

    So, the question facing artists is thus: What can I do (that I do...) that will get me the ability to do more? Giving art away for free is not it. Even in the digital age, there is less time for imaging (or painting, etc) if I have to go out and earn bread to feed myself and keep the rent going.

    Solve this, and you will have more art than you can stand.
    • An artist lives off of selling their time in the form of their art.

      In other words: if you aren't dedicated to it full-time, you can't make art? Hmmmm...

      • any away.

        Consider the difference between hobbyist and professional. A professional must make a living at whatever he/she is doing, while the hobbyist does not. Now, granted, I have seen folks making a living as artists that didn't make very good art. I have also seen brilliant artists who work on their kitchen tables after they come home from work.

        The key, though is time/practice. Art is a communication, and like all such usually gets better when the creator has more experience. If art was easy, then ever

    • Re:And exactly how do artists justify this? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bay43270 ( 267213 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2004 @01:48AM (#11197661) Homepage
      But not all good photos come from people who make a living off art. I would imagine 1 or 2 good photos at a time from weekend hacks could make a significant contribution to a site like this. If the professional artist don't want to help... fine!
      • Agreed. The one issue that hasn't been brought up yet is the problem of model releases and similar legal BS. It seems most of the amature photographers posting here are assuming landscapes or textures. However, if you want "happy people using computers" photos for your marketing docs you'll need to deal with these issues whether or not you are a professional.
        • I agree with both of you above. The conversation thread illustrates something that is often forgotten: production cost.

          Even with advances in my particular field (photos/imaging) the technical side of things was never the great expense. It was legal work, model releases, rights assignments, sets, model (human and item) fees, planning, building, etc.

          As an example, take a look at any simple illustrative picture in a major magazine advert. Now really look at it. Now try to figure the costs of all those items,
      • photography isn't exactly an art. Just like a record player isn't exactly a musical instrument. Anyone can push a button on a camera and it comes out the same. Anyone can (or used to) play a record and it comes out the same. Most professional photographers aren't artists in the same way that most professional DJs aren't musicians. Similarly, the degree of artistic expression is much more limited with a camera or a stereo then with paint or guitars.
        • Pushing the button on a camera is not photography, just as moving a paintbrush is not painting.

          When you look at art for any length of time (commercial or fine) you begin to notice a pattern. The pieces that become popular are the ones that required much work and input.

          Yes, I know imaging looks simple, but believe me, it is a true exercise in communications and planning.

          True, I agree with you that most professional photographers are not the sort of artists one envisions but you have to understand exactly
  • Every once and a while I wander around with my digital camera and take a bunch of pictures and they just sit on my hard drive. I am going to submit all the photos I took at the Bronx Zoo, as well as the ones I took when I was walking around Times Square during my lunch hour.

    I never intended to make money off these photos, but I think it would be pretty rewarding if I was flipping through a magazine and saw a picture I took

  • Great idea... BUT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Monday December 27, 2004 @10:50PM (#11196912)
    Being a semi-professional photographer, I have tens of thousands of images that aren't being utilized that I would like to publish in a manner such as this. I don't mind putting images in the public domain, but I would like to receive credit or references where they're used. Most publishers would have no problem with this, and many photographers like myself would gladly donate quality images to the project in return for helping to establish our reputation.

    The problem I see with this site is that the images online appear to be anonymous. So what's to stop people from uploading copyrighted images or material they don't own the rights to? I can't see this project working if they can't documented some attribution for the content they're distributing.

    The site could try to hide under some sort of "common carrier" status, but ultimately, because there is no provinence attached to the content, no decent publisher would touch the images for fear of legal liability.

    The concept is nice, however, it's not practical in its current form. The system needs to be enhanced so that contributors can identify themselves and claim authorship of the content so they can verify the legitimacy of the licensing. This would also provide the motivation for higher-caliber artists to contribute, especially if they could choose from a finite list of licensing options, none of which necessarily requiring remuneration, but at the least, acknowledgement of the author of the content.
    • RTFFAQ:

      What's the policy on credit citations and watermarks? There is a photographer credit field that you can fill in when you upload the photo (name and email or url fields) which are displayed with the photograph. The Image User's FAQ encourages the users to give photo credit whenever possible, but, because it's public domain, you can't force people to behave nicely. Images with watermarks may be accepted if the watermark does not reduce the utility of the image or attempt to claim copyrights which ha

      • If you want to REQUIRE that credit be granted for your images, then find a site that ISN'T asking for artists to put their images in the public domain

        The problem is that the parent poster brought up two questions. The first, how does a person get credit, is obvious. Don't use a site that is asking you to put your stuff in public domain.

        But the parent brings up another great point - how does *anyone* know that the person uploading the images has the right to actually put said images into the public domai

        • The TOS tries to cover this by asserting that by uploading, you state that the image is already PD OR uploader owns the copyright. That's a bit thin, I think. Maybe requiring a scanned/signed pdf or something would be a better approach. If there's some paper trail, then the site could easily claim "good faith" and sic the real copyright holder on the one who made the fraudulent donation.

  • Just wanted to mention Wikimedia Commons [wikimedia.org] which is an alternative to this site you might want to consider.

    They aim to serve as a central resource to all the Wikimedia projects which includes the highly successful Wikipedia projects [slashdot.org].

  • Compare this to iStockphoto (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For a stock photography site to be really useful, it needs a LOT of images, a lot of legal ass-covering, and a well thought-out quality control system. This is one of the reasons that stock photography usually costs hundreds of dollars for even restricted uses.

    Take a look at the size and complexity of iStockphoto [istockphoto.com] and you'll see just how far a free photography site would have to go to save buyers $1 (or $3 for highest res.). Even if you can match the quality, find 180,000 files, and build a really good sear

  • repository.. hah! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by M1FCJ ( 586251 )
    108 pictures and this is called a repository? More like a web page for a couple of people. Not good enough to even start with.
  • http://gallery.hd.org/index.jsp

    Quite comprehensive, been up for a couple of years, and nicely organised. And yes, a small fraction of them are mine.

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