Photographs on a site

Where do you get them from?

[Gmorgan]

Wondering if anyone here can help me with a quick question I've got got?

Looking at a few of my competitor's sites I see one recurring theme - lots of nice & very professional looking photos. Mainly of smiling businessmen, computer systems and large properties.

Where would I go to get photo's such as these? Or have each of their webmasters either gone wandered round places with a camera or gone wandering round the web nicking them?

All insights greatly appreciated :-)

[Andrew Thomas]

most images of 'cheerful people' would come from stock photography or royalty free images - people like corbis - comstock are a few names, just search on google for royalty free images, some of these you will have to pay a one off fee and others you will pay once and use as many times as you wish.

The other alternative is to buy a digital camera and go down the shops snapping pictures :)

[msgraph]

Stock Photography sites [dir.yahoo.com]

There are some great ones under the royalty free category.

[Leosghost]

Can't go down the shops snapping pictures without anybody you photograph signing " "release" form...
Not if you don't want to get a lawsuit that is ....

Aslong as they're recognisable ..they own the rights to their image ...

[defanjos]

You can try www.istockphoto*com. If you become a member, you can download pics for as low as 50 cents (US).

[ram_mac]

I love

[sxc.hu...]

Very wide range of images - most good quality (at least good enough for online anyway), and most allow you free use commercially too.

Sign-up required (free)

[ccDan]

When using photographs of people from stock photography sites, check the fine print first. If they don't have a model release on file or cannot verify that the images have been model-released, don't use them!

[moose606]

I have a few photo galleries(Corel Gallery, and ClickArt), with 1000's of photographs on a wide range of subjects. These photos are royalty free and can be used for any purpose you desire.Also, if selling a product, the manufacturer can usually provide you with a disk containing professional photos of their products.

[dulwich]

Not sure where GMorgan is ... In US it may be verboten but in England you DON'T own the right to your image, so technically you could snap away in the shopping centre and use the stuff in publication. Might get you some funny looks/a smack in the mouth, but not illegal.

[Gmorgan]

Dulwich, I'm in the UK so might do just that. Snap and run!

Thanks for the advice everyone, I've started compiling a nice little folder of free photos for use on the site.

[Leosghost]

WHHHHOOOOOOps!Sorry Dulwich but if what you think was true you could use pictures of the Queen , lady Di etc and they couldn't do a thing about it.. ;)
just because the law is rarely invoked in the uk doesn't mean it doesnt exist ....the day that "no win ..no fee" gets to the UK big time ..a lot of currently unenforced laws will be enforced for the benefit of Fred Bloggs!
I don't live in the UK now but i lived and worked there in the visual media tv , videos etc for years ..we always had to get people to sign release forms ....One of our competitors didn't ( filmed beach shots for background in music video ) someone didn't want to be included ...( you can imagine in the UK the sun doesn't show up to order, the reshoot can cost a fortune so they ignored the objection )...problem was the person had a high court barrister ( QC ) for an uncle :0)....."damages" of £200,000.00 later plus "plaintifs costs " and the lesson was learned ...
the exceptions which we see every day to this enforcement in the "tabloids" does not mean the law doesn't exist ...most celebrities dont enforce because any publicity is good publicity or because fighting the issue would draw more attention to the case than would hoping that the next day something else would take the place of the story on the front page....
Course you can do as you think ...but you've been warned ..the law is the law ...

[dulwich]

Hmmm interesting. Sorry if I've steered you wrong there GM. My understanding was (and I have been told this by newspaper lawyers, not simply going by what the tabs can get away with, so I apologise!) that on original photography (ie you took the snap) you had the right to record anyone's image/their house, whatever; it was simply reusing an image of a person that was a problem. To take that eg, reusing a pic of Lady Di would be a copyright infringement because you'd used somebody else's pic (obviously). But there you're infringing the image copyright holder, not the subject themselves. In practice of course crowd scenes are not a problem (football matches?). In practice you aren't going to shove a camera in a stranger's face and you wouldn't get the right pic anyway. On a practical level. If your standard of photography is good enough, why not just use family and friends? Anyway, stand corrected.

[CompressedAir]

Wow great link ram_mac :)
That site is great!

[Dan_Norder]

Dulwich wrote:
"My understanding was (and I have been told this by newspaper lawyers, not simply going by what the tabs can get away with, so I apologise!) that on original photography (ie you took the snap) you had the right to record anyone's image/their house, whatever"

Keep in mind that (at least in the US and probably the UK as well) rights to use people in images without their permission for use in journalism versus rights to use people in images without their permission for use in commercial applications (brochures, entertainment, etc.) are different.

The newspaper lawyers you spoke with are most likely correct (as theire opinion matches up with what I was told about in Communication Law class here in the States) at least as far as their experience goes, but not necessarily in other situations.

Experts are only experts in their limited fields. And that's always a good thing to keep in mind whenever it comes to anything like that.