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Posted on 25/03/04 8:42:49 PM |
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trinityofone
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Speculate to accumulate?
Steve, One of the things I've been meaning to ask, which I believe will be of use to any other budding commercial montagists (or is it montager). It's a question on stock images. My images are almost always destined for one website or another, so I very rarely need huge, 300 DPI images (saying that, I have used the images from the books on more than one occasion). Royalty free images are notoriously expensive, if I was starting out, I'd be very cautious about buying them, in case I couldn't get any work or the work I did was rejected. Admittedly, once you have them, they're infinitely reusable but the initial outlay, even if it were for one or two images is a lot to pay out for blindly. A bit like starting out as a builder, buying £500 worth of bricks and then knocking on people's doors asking if they want a wall! 
Just one other thing, do the clients supply the images of politicians and celebrities or is that something you have to source yourself. I had a look at a couple of sites, Associated Press being one but it seems you have to belong to a professional body to sign up. _________________ It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays |
Posted on 25/03/04 9:00:30 PM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6842 Reply  |
Re: Speculate to accumulate?
Yes, I know what you mean - stock photography can be horrendously expensive. I took out a subscription to AbleStock (surprise, surprise) because that way I could download as many images as I wanted and keep them forever. I was really impressed with them, which is why I asked them to supply the images for the 2ed CD. But that did cost $350 or so for a 6 months subscription, and I realise that while this is vital to my work it's an awful lot for a hobbyist. There are a couple of alternatives. One is Morgue File, which is a free photo resource started by a couple of guys who do it because they want to. Some really great stuff there, and you can do as you like with the photos. I also recently discovered istockphoto, which is an exchange site for people with digital cameras, effectively. You have to pay to download images, but they cost between 50c and $1.50 (depending on the resolution you want) and there's an enormous range, meticulously sorted and keyworded. Some of the photos are so-so, but there's some really professional stuff here as well. Pics of celebs and politicians are very, very much harder. Some photo library will always own the rights, and will want a fee if they see them used. I had to pay £60 (I think) for the photo of Humphrey Bogart I used on the cover of the 2ed, for example. If it's US politicians you want, it's a lot easier. The Department of Defense, the Navy, NASA and the rest all have vast, searchable photo libraries which are entirely "in the public domain" - which, as far as I can tell, means you can do pretty much as you like with them. Start with http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/ and take it from there. That's where I got the pics of Bush in the book, and that's why I was able to put them on the CD. If I come across any more sources of good images, I'll post them here. Maybe it's worth starting a new section for this? |
Posted on 25/03/04 9:52:58 PM |
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trinityofone
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Re: Speculate to accumulate?
Thanks Steve, I'm glad I'm not missing something obvious and even the pros revert to the common free sites
If and when I do break into the heady world of professional illustration or whatever, I think my first port of call will be AbleStock, they have an impressive range and as you say, they are particularly suited to the montage artist. Bodyshots seem quite reasonable too. The thing I tend to forget, is that for images of famous people, you don't necessarily need a huge image, a headshot of about 450-500 pixels can prove adequate for most composites. I think it's definitely worth keeping an image source thread going. Here are a few of the ones I use regularly, they're pretty much public domain, with the odd exception and most are good quality. FreeImages (lots of high res every day objects, similar to Hemera's photoobjects) ImageAfter (a bit like Morguefile) StockExchange (same concept as istock but free) BigFoto (mainly photos of cities and areas but a few animals and people) The Nato site is also a good source of political images. There's also the Google and Yahoo picture searches but it's a copyright minefield. _________________ It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays |
Posted on 01/04/04 2:23:06 PM |
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Ryan
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Re: Speculate to accumulate?
Hi Trinity For my image library I am subscribed to a few digital photo mags whch quite often offer free high res images on their cd. I also use Photospin.com which s quite a wide selection of royalty free pictures. Stock.xchng is also a good resource http://www.sxc.hu/ and there are free textures http://www.textureartist.net/textures/index.htm HTH Ryan |
Posted on 01/04/04 4:12:11 PM |
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trinityofone
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Re: Speculate to accumulate?
sxc (stockexchange) is in the list, it's great. I've been collecting the Focus PS guides which have some good images and textures (although the majority are from ImageAfter). I'll have have a look at textureartist. One interesting one which I play around with from time to time when I'm bored is Diddly. Basically, someone has written a script to randomly generate common digital camera filename formats and then passes them to google image search. You often some good scenery shots and other stockable images. It's a bit of a lottery though
_________________ It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays |