Most of the time, I take a set of images for a client and provide a usage license for social media, websites, magazines, ads and marketing pieces - you name it, I’m delighted to give the license. I want my clients to use and enjoy the images. In this scenario, as the photographer, I have the copyright, and I give permission and additional licenses to anyone who wants to use an image. This includes my clients’ vendors, or other people involved in the project. It also means that when they share the image on Instagram - including stories - they not only include the photo credit but they make sure anyone adding their post to stories does the same. It’s a lot, and I will cover this in a separate blog post.

So, what happens if you really want to put an image on your website, blog or post and you know you don’t have a license for it? It seems like few people make an effort to find out the attribution or copyright information of an image, so why should you bother? I sure wish I had a nickel for every time I see “photo by other” on an Instagram post. Here’s the truth: just because an image is out there does not mean it is out there legally, and if you don’t see an attribution right where you spotted it, it doesn’t mean you can just use it however you like. My copyrighted work is all over the place without attribution, but I didn’t put it there. In addition, images can be on Pinterest, Instagram, websites and the like and only have partial rights information available. Time to learn how to do some detective work on the matter so you know you are using images without restrictions.

Using Google Advanced Search

Say you are looking to post an image of a bamboo stool. You enter “bamboo stool” in the google search bar and many wonderful images, including images from blog posts, pop up. Click on the gear in the top right corner and go to “advanced search.” At the bottom is a drop-down menu called usage rights, which lets you specify your criteria. In this case, our options are “all,” which is what a regular google search finds, “Creative Commons Licenses” and “Commercial and Other Licenses.” When I select either of these two and hit the blue advanced search bar, the pickings are slim. Very slim. I do notice under Creative Commons Licenses there is a terrific stool I could share, titled “Mudha Stool, Rajasthan” on Flickr. Next, I click on the license details that go with the image so I can view the license information. It takes me right to Creative Commons.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit that provides a place for people and organizations to “grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works, ensure proper attribution, and allow others to copy, distribute and make use of those works.” The available license for this stool, “attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)” lets me “Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format” and “Adapt —remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.” Under these terms, I must give the the appropriate credit and provide a link to the license. In addition, if I rework the image, my contributions to the image have to be distributed under the same terms as the original. Great! So now back at the image in google search, I need to go straight to its source on Flickr to get the photographer’s information and the image itself.

On Flickr, I learn that the image is by Neil Cummings, and there is additional information here as well about where the image was taken and when (you never know, that information could be useful in a blog post!). The final step is to properly credit Mr. Cummings. At the bottom of the page where posted (or in a similar location), put the name of the photographer, the rights as indicated (this is right there on the source site) and link it back to the site. A second way to do it (and this is preferred), is to put the name of the photographer with a link back to his area t the source of the image (Flickr), the name of the image with a link back to the source, and a link to the Creative Commons license. Want to see the stool, attribution and rights info? Here it is!