Using Photographs in/for Your Work

As an artist there are many times when you may need to use a photograph - perhaps as a visual reference, or as part of an animation or website. The best option is always to use a photo you have taken - you own it and have all the rights to that image. If for some reason that is not an option you need to do one of 3 thing:

1. Get permission to use the image from the creator or rights holder
or
2. Use an image from the public domain or that are royalty free
and
3. Drastically change the image from the original version so that you are creating something new - both visually and in terms of concept  (this means the idea behind the image should be very different and the appearance should also be very different)

Works in the public domain belong to the public so anyone can use them. Works that are royalty free belong to an artist or organization but are available to use without charge. In either case, you should still give the artist credit.  

If you do use the work of another artist and do not give them credit, you are plagiarizing their work. Make sure you keep a record - probably in a Google Doc, of the artist and where you found the image.

Where can you find images in the public domain or that are royalty free?

Pixabay
Photos for Class

You can also use Google's image search - just add public domain to your search string. Keep in mind that you will still need to visit the webpage and confirm that the image is actually in the public domain.

So you've found an image - how do you change it drastically? 

I'm glad you asked! I found this rock wall photo on pixabay.com - they do not list the photographers and do not require attribution but as a best practice, I still want to give them credit. I'm going to use this image to create an image texture for a 3d animation in Blender.

What I don't want to do is just crop the image like this:

While the images are different visually, the concept behind the 2 images is still the same - a stone wall.

This is much better - I've changed both the concept and how this photograph looks. Instead of a rock wall becoming a smaller rock wall, the rock wall has been transformed to a rock texture.