Royalty free images
Free of charge under reserve
If you are looking for free images for your company blog or privately, you will come across the same problem again and again. Outdated link collections to images, GIFS or pictures that unfortunately no longer work. Either the domain now has a different owner who offers completely different products or the licence model has changed and the rights holder expects money. If you only want to underline the content of your videos or text with your images, you often need good and simple but licence-free images according to the CCO licence.
Free of charge with reservation because: The CC0 licence does provide sufficient legal security between the provider (ideally the author) of the images and the person who uses them (the user). However, especially with online portals, you have no guarantee that the person offering the images or photos in his or her name is actually the author - i.e. the rights holder - of these images.
Observe license information
Always inform yourself about the current license information before using the links listed here. Caution is better than warning letters and legal fees! Things can always change, because nothing is as constant as change. In addition, it is recommended that when using these images - even if it is not explicitly required - still name the author, for example: "BildLandschaftBerge.jpg Copyright by Max Fotomann on unsplash.com".
People in pictures
Illustrations, photos, short films with people represent a particular legal risk potential.a license agreement that the provider (usually also the author) concludes with the portal or the user concerns exclusively the copyrighted work, i.e. the photo itself.
Whether the personal rights of the people depicted were respected when the photo was taken, i.e. whether they consented to be photographed and contractually assigned their rights to their own image to the photographer, is something you often cannot find out in the terms and conditions of the download portal. Professional agencies work with contracts when photographing people and the models usually don't do it for free. So be especially careful with pictures of people, because there is quickly the danger of an expensive warning!
Now, enough of the legalese. Let's move on to the links.
Unsplash
Undisputed number 1 with me and many WordPress users. In Unsplash appear in 10 days 10 new high-resolution photos under the CC0 license. The images have excellent quality. The keyword search function used is fast with good content hit rate. Furthermore, there are image collections for superordinate topics like "Novemberrain" or "Strong Men".
LifeOfPix
The insider tip LifeOfPix offers not only pictures but has a little brother LifeOfVids which provides free videos hosted on Vimeo. At LifeOfPix, new high-resolution photos in excellent quality are uploaded regularly via the Leeroy advertising agency in Montreal. The license notice is somewhat hidden on the About menu . If you want, you can even add your favorite photographer to your favorites list.
The U.S. National Archives on Flickr
Vintage images from The U.S. National Archives on Flickr. This site lists vintage images from the everyday life of US Americans whose copyrights have expired or are no longer available. Many of the images are from government or agency archives. Unfortunately, there is no search function and you have to click and browse your way through. But then you are rewarded with the occasional impressive snapshot. By the way, the picture in this article is also from this collection.
PublicDomainArchive
This project was allegedly started by a web and graphic designer who also needed royalty-free images for his work. He went searching, found what he was looking for, and then promptly reserved a domain and stored the corresponding images in the database.
Pexels
With new images every day, Pexels - which currently has over 5000 photos - is reminiscent of Unsplash in terms of its layout. The license conditions can be found here. The image database contains a lot of images with people. Partly with impressive motifs.
Unfortunately, the following tips are becoming more and more necessary. Who - like me - has dealt in depth with the Abmahn, DSGVO and UrhG topic, goes even with this harmless blog article on the safe side...
In this context, I would like to draw the reader's attention to the fact that my services do not constitute legal advice, but relate exclusively to the technical and functional areas of a website. Should you require advice on data protection law and copyright, please contact a lawyer or a data protection officer of the authorities. All information and recommendations offered by me are therefore without guarantee and without liability claim. Also in the foreseeable future, necessary adjustments and changes according to the UrhG, the DSGVO, cannot be excluded according to my current knowledge.
And now have fun browsing fantastic and inspiring pictures.
