FREE photography is available on the web for you to use on Steemit! There are some sites you can use for FREE images. USE THEM! Read to the end to see a list of resources.
Every day, as I read my Feed, I see dozens of stock images from Getty, Shutterstock, Adobe Fotolia and the other agencies being used as eye candy! Stock images cannot be used in the fashion I am seeing them used here.
In fact, they really cannot be used at all unless you are the photographer! No stock image can be used in a standalone fashion to make profit for anyone other than the photographer. You may provide a link to the image, BUT THAT IS ALL!
An image with no credit claims by insinuation that you are the copyright holder, and is image plagiarism as well as copyright violation for unauthorized use if it is from one of the licensing agencies and not a free image! However, credit alone for a stock image is not good enough. You must purchase a license, but a license would do no good here, because you would still be in copyright violation for making a profit from the image!
Just as your blog is copyright protected, so are the images by professional photographers that are showing up in blogs on Steemit! Please do respect that!
There are some sites you can use for FREE images. USE THEM! You still need to be careful and need to know how to trace back to the source. If you find an image on one of the free sites, I suggest you drop it into Tineye to see what results come up. If the image also comes up in any of the main stock agencies, click on the find to see if it is still available there. If it is, then the image has been placed illegally on the free site and you are not authorized to use it.
Tineye is for Reverse Image Search, and most professionals use it to find out where their images are being used on the web. The stock agencies use a more sophisticated method, so be warned!
By far the best idea, is to use your own images. That way you can be 100% sure that you have the right to use them, but be careful with images of people and certain properties which require model and property releases!
(I will later add a small tutorial for Tineye for those who need to know how to use it.)
I am not a lawyer but, if you are a bit skeptical about what I am saying, here is a good article by a lawyer about the problem. Everyone on Steemit needs to take his advice very seriously, as Steemit is a for-profit site! For better advice on using Stock Photography, please read his article.
Here are some free sites for you to get images that you can legally use on Steemit! But be careful. When you find an image you like, run it through Tineye to make sure it does have a CCO License.
The image was photographed with my old Canon EOS 5D and the EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens.
Camera settings: 1/125 sec; f/20; ISO 100 in the studio with professional strobe lighting.
Image © Diane Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.
My original image on Getty Images
Thanks for taking the time to read this! I appreciate it.
To find my photography and designs on Steemit, please search on #dianemacphoto. lens.