What are Your Best Resources to Find Free Images and Photos for Your Hub?

There is no question that illustrating a Hub with photos or other graphics enhances the Hub for the reader and adds to the stickiness of the Hub in terms of luring and retaining readers. While it is easy to search for and copy photos and other graphics from other websites this is not a good practice in general. So, here are some sites and techniques that can be used to legally obtain pictures to illustrate your hubs without having to purchase such graphics.

One site that I have found very useful for free and copyright free photos as well as some other digital materials is the Library of Congress's American Memory collection. This is a fascinating site in itself and one of the problems with using it is that you can easily become distracted and find yourself giving in to the temptation to stay longer than intended and find yourself browsing through the vast collection enjoying the documents, maps, photos, video and audio recordings. Because of the massive size of the collection, I usually use the search feature on the site to seek out photos.

Now, much of the content in the American Memory section of the library is subject to copyright and cannot legally be copied or downloaded other than for personal use on your own computer.

However, they do have some older materials (including photos) which are out of copyright as well as a number of photos taken by government photographers as part of their work for the government.

This is especially true of the 1930s and 1940s when the Roosevelt Administration was trying to stimulate the economy by funding numerous make-work type projects ranging from physical labor like the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) to intellectual pursuits like the Federal Writers Project (which commissioned books to be written), art projects where the government hired artists to paint pictures to decorate government buildings and photography projects among others.

Since the writers, artists and photographers were hired by the government to do this work the product is considered to be a work for hire under the copyright law and, as a result, the copyright belongs to the entity that hired the people to do the work rather than the creators of the work themselves.

In this case the government, not the writers, artists or photographers, owns the copyright. In the case of the photographs, at least, the government seems to have taken the position that, since the taxpayers paid for this work, the taxpayers are free to legally use the photos without having to pay royalties or other restrictions.

Another way to illustrate your Hub article is the judicious use of your eBay and Amazon capsules. Normally, I just place these as the end as extra revenue generators. However, since most Amazon and eBay ads contain photos, you can often find products on these sites that will double as illustrations for your article. When using this technique, I usually insert the capsule next to the text to be illustrated and limit the number of ads to one or two. If I know of a book or movie dealing with the same topic I am writing about I will use Amazon and select the book or DVD category with the title of that book or movie as the keyword (or use the ASIN or ISBN number feature with the code for that book or movie). If the topic is about food, a holiday, a historic figure, a place to visit, etc. one can usually think of an item on Amazon or eBay that will illustrate it. An additional advantage of this technique is that it can help generate additional revenue from Amazon or eBay for you. Of course, a disadvantage is that, especially with eBay, the picture is controlled by Amazon or eBay and can be changed by them, so you will have to re-check the article periodically and possibly update it by re-doing the Amazon or eBay selection.

In addition to still photos and graphics, HubPages also provides us with the capability of embedding YouTube videos in the Hub and these can be a very good substitute for photographs. Visit YouTube.com and use the search box on the site to search for a relevant video. YouTube is no longer just a place where amateurs lacking talent can post short vanity videos of themselves doing stupid things. While such videos do exist on the site, YouTube also contains some very good amateur work as well as short professional works published by corporations, colleges and other organizations with the resources to produce high quality work. An embedded video from YouTube may be just the thing to illustrate your Hub.

Finally, how about producing your own photos? Digital cameras are inexpensive and easy to use and the Windows Paint program (included in the Accessories folder), which comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system software, functions as a limited, but easy to use, editing tool. There are other photo editing tools available as well which range from free (such as Picasa which is a free download from Google) to hundreds of dollars and from easy to use for amateurs to professional grade tools.

In addition to low price and ease of use, today's digital cameras are usually small and easily carried in one's pocket as well as enabling users to take literally hundreds of pictures on a single card which can then be downloaded to a PC and the card re-used. With no film or development charges, massive storage capabilities and instant access to photos just taken, there is no reason why a person cannot quickly build up a large catalog of photos for use in illustrating Hub articles. In addition to regular pictures of family events and vacation trips, I frequently seek out and take pictures for Hub articles I am writing as well as of practically anything that catches my eye that I think might make a useful illustration. In fact, in addition to deliberately going out and photographing something for an article in progress or already written, I often find myself getting ideas for a new article while randomly photographing something.

Now there are a few caveats here. While taking your own pictures usually makes you the copyright holder automatically and therefore free to use the photo without restriction, there are still some restrictions. The first restriction is that, while you are usually free to take a picture of anyone, you cannot publish a picture that contains identifiable private individuals without first obtaining a signed photo release from each identifiable person in the picture. I usually get around this by trying to either take the picture from an angle in which the people are not recognizable or which places them in a position that can be easily cut (using Microsoft Paint or other photo editing software) from the photo to be published. Public figures such as politicians, movie stars, etc. who are constantly in the public eye can usually be photographed and published without having to obtain a photo release.

Pictures of private property, including objects and actions taking place there are usually alright so long as you, the photographer, are taking it from a public place. It is usually legal to photograph a home or building while standing on public property (such as a public sidewalk) or other private property where you have a right or permission to be but you cannot enter the property to take the picture.

Finally, you usually cannot take and publish pictures of other copyrighted works. Things like taking pictures of paintings, other photographs, scenes in movies and plays in theaters, images on a TV, etc. is generally not allowed as these things are usually subject copyright, making photographing them the same as if you lifted the image off the Internet directly.

While we are on the subject of taking your own pictures, don't forget your cell phone. Most cell phones come with built in cameras now days and, while the quality might not be as good as that of a good digital camera, it is still a good tool for taking a picture when you encounter the perfect object for a Hub article but don't have your regular camera at hand.

While these suggestions will not satisfy all of your Hub illustration needs, using them should enable you to legally include pictures in more of your Hubs.