Buying Images Online
February 27, 2013 § 7 Comments
Inside this body of mine thumps the heart of a nice person, a fire-blazing rebellious streak, and a nightmarish fear of getting arrested and/or sued. You may imagine that this mixture causes some serious internal strife.
In terms of social media, my moral compass comes up against my bad girl need to steal images for the sake of art, sharing and communication more often than I care to admit. It’s hard to write about fashion and celebrity and award shows when the images are copy written and owned by big companies with lots of money.
But it’s wrong to steal and I know it.
The other night my moral rightness sent me clicking over to Getty Images who do all of the brilliant images for (basically) every Earthly event you see pictures of.
Just for kicks I registered at Getty, and searched Editorial Academy Award Arrivals, of which there were over 4,000 photo images.
I input Anne Hathaway to find out the cost of one image/angle of the infamous Prada. Under pricing, the least expensive option for mobile and web usage for a 3 month limited period was $49.00.
This was for one image. One angle. For only 3 months.
My Dress Mess post, which I’m re-working so that it can be linked directly to Getty’s pictures, focuses on 6 dresses that needed some work. That post, like all of my posts, written purely for my readers (for no compensation), would have cost me a whopping $300.00, had I purchased them legally for use.
So what is a rebellious, yet chicken-shit-scared-to-be-sued-girl to do when she wants to spread the good word, but is unable to without going into deep debt.
When you’re up against companies like Huffington Post, People Magazine, Elle, Glamour, Vogue, and the rest of the biggies, is there any way to get your message across without breaking the rules?
M.
Of course you can take your own photos, and I do. Any other thoughts? Especially when you write about editorial issues or world events where photos are owned by companies like Getty Images?
BTW I tried to find a free image from off of Getty to tie into this post, but even the images listed as free were not. The cheapest free image I could find listed for $15.00.
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Tagged: blogging, borrowing images, cpying, editorial photos, Getty images, google images, paying for images, social media, using images
Definitely harder for big events like the Academy Awards but for other pictures, you can always search flickr for images under creative commons licensing. There’s different types of licensing (which I don’t know the intricacies of) but worth looking into. Otherwise yes, I try to only use my own photos.
But I always wonder about Pinterest because you can pin an image and it gives you the code to embed it into a blog post but does that make it OK and legal? My gut says no and I try not to do that (tho’ I have on occasion).
Christine @ Love, Life, Surf recently posted…Not Fair
I need to look into Flickr more. I don’t know why I haven’t.
As far as Pinterest goes, it isn’t legal. You can pin something, but your I’m pretty sure your pin will always link back to the original content. Not so if you copy it. I’m fairly certain it’s the same for Tumblr. I’ve seen people pull images from Tumblr, but it’s the same deal… stealing.
It’s better to use your own stuff and ask if you can. I’ve had pretty good luck in the past when I’ve asked and most people don’t care.
I do think it’s a different story if you are writing about merchandise and you show the image. In that case, it’s kind of like you are selling the product. I think I’ve sold a thousand pairs of the Lululemon Pleasing Pants based on my stats!
I just use free-reign sites like Wikimedia Commons and Microsoft Clip Art, or I take my own image. I didn’t used to, back when I first started blogging and didn’t know about these things. But now I know better. But I don’t really write about a lot of current event topics that would require specific pictures (on my post about the Heart Attack Grill, I took an image from their website, but they had a disclaimer saying their images could be used as long as the registered trademark symbol was included). I feel your pain. That could get very costly!
Carrie Rubin recently posted…Freshly Pressed, Featured Blogs, And Time For Another Giveaway
I haven’t heard of Wikmedia Commons, so thank you, I will look into that. It could get very costly to have to pay for images, so I think I’ll just focus on the writing from now on, link up the images, and get creative about what image I can use to tie everything together since imagery is so important to a blog.
Thanks for commenting, Carrie. I always appreciate your insight.
OK, I just got some great ideas off your comment thread about where to get images – because honestly, I have not given this one single thought. I don’t use images as much as you do – like the Oscar shots – but I never would have given a thought to whether or not it was legal – so thank you for the awareness!
ilene recently posted…Miles to Go Before I Sleep – Fierce Diva Anniversary Edition
I had no idea about this either. Thanks for the info, Martha and Carrie. No more images for me til I know all the legal mumbo jumbo. God Bless America…
Marcia recently posted…Try
When I started blogging I didn’t think about it at all. It was only after I heard a few horror stories about bloggers getting sued did I go back into my files and delete a lot of my “borrowed” images. It does make it harder when you write a smaller blog. Definitely!