Thing 19: The Legal Side of Things

From the British Library Flickr Page

By nature I'm a person that likes to follow the rules. I try to be as careful as possible when using images. I make a lot of promotional posters for work so it's important that the images that I use are free to use and not the property of someone else. Sometimes it's just not possible to find the right image though, in which case I've resorted to taking out the camera and making my own, not beyond the realms of possibility. There's plenty of editing tools and apps for phones now that allow you to make a decent looking photo. 

From the National Library of Ireland Flickr page, found via Flickr Commons

My problem is time. Searching for images is very time consuming. I end up wasting hours going through page after page of images and moving onto the next website when I've found nothing on that website. It's hard work finding the right one. I didn't spend too much time looking for the images in this blog post for that very reason. I use the Flickr Commons page quite a bit. Or else I limit my search in Flickr to commons license images. The other tool I use quite a lot is Google Images, I can limit my search under the search tools to 'labeled for reuse' - it's not as reliable but sometimes it does the job. I use Unsplash quite a lot for images, in particular for the Rudai 23 images. 

There's peace of mind knowing that the images you're using are legal. There's a bit of work involved in attributing each image but it's important to do it. Coming from an art background, I've had my images used without credit and it's not pleasant.