Nur Ahmad Furlong

Category: Photography

  • Finding Good Free Imagery Online

    Searching for images for design projects is one of the daily frustrations of any designer, especially when clients are not willing to pay for imagery but still want the highest quality. I love browsing Getty Images’ Vast collection of exquisite images, but they’re way out of the league of most companies in terms of budget.

    In the past I’ve used websites such as www.sxc.hu (Stock.XCHNG) which has a large database of free to use images with various degrees of usage rights.

    stock-exchange

    Flickr.com is another great source of images and it has a surprising amount of great looking high quality images, though it’s a bit of a chore sifting through the images and finding those with appropriate licenses.

    flashbased-flickr-tag-search

    I liked searching through this flash based related tag flickr search tool. It brings up some options much quicker and allows you to randomly browse tags which are related.

    cc-search

    I just found the creative commons search page, which allows one to search Flickr, Google, BlipTV and a few other sites for creative commons media to use in your projects. http://search.creativecommons.org/

    What’s your favourite place online to find imagery, free, paid for, whatever.

  • Great Flickr Photography – Check out Daniel Lurie’s pics

    When I came across Daniel Luries’ Flickr account I just had to contact him and give him a compliment on a great collection of imagery. It’s amazing how technology & web 2.0 has levelled the playing fields in many disciplines to allow those who, like Daniel are looking to make a name for themselves. Many times Flickr Photographers are either willing to allow you to use their images with links back or they’re selling great pics at affordable prices.

    See a few of Daniel’s shots below:

    Daniel Lurie Flickr - Darth Vader Daniel Lurie Flickr - Photographer waiting

    Daniel Lurie Flickr - View from Lion's Head

    A quick Flickr search could yield exactly what you were looking for an you might be able to get away with paying flickr photographers much less than you’d be spending at stock photography sites.

    Using Creative Commons images on your blog

    I’ve also installed a cool wordpress plugin called Photo Dropper which allows you to search appropriate creative commons flickr images and drop them from flickr into your posts via your wordpress admin panel. I think this is a great way for both amateur photographers and bloggers to share the value. The plugin also drops in this nice little credit automatically. Creative Commons License photo credit: Millzero Photography ( 99% low fat photography)