indi.ca

a spider shot by evilgreg3000

I feel obliged to post because this is fast becoming space for Baby Z to rant. On September 7th I signed with Wijeya Publishers to redo their IT Times magazine. I incidentally wrote the business plan for it last year and left in a huff, but that is neither here nor there. Now it is crunch time and I have to organize 15 things at once, the worst of which is waking up during business hours. I’ve done a bunch of layouts which I’ll release as soon as the thing comes. Anyways, I end up needing stock photography so I use Flickr. For print you need high quality stuff, and you need to be more respectable intel-property wise than on the web. If you ask people on Flickr they’ll usually be OK, but there are also 1000s of photos with free licenses built in.

Creative Commons (cc) is basically an alternative to copyright. Rather telling people what they can’t do, it tells what they can do. I think as a small, hobbyist photography you need exposure more than money. For example, all the free stuff I do is what leads me to jobs. This website, for example, barely pays for its own hosting, but all my other opportunities flow from this. Plus, as an artist its cool to have your stuff appreciated and shared. As a writer type person, Flickr is fk sweet for stock photography, i can just enter keywords and find really good stuff. And, by luck, the people with open licenses tend to be awesome photographers who upload high res images.

There are 3 categories of Creative Commons License that I use without asking, though I’ll send them emails when it goes to prints and issues if they’d like.

* Attribution License: basically, you just have to give them credit. The most open license, which I license my photos under.
* Attribtion No Derivatives: Give them credit, and don’t hack or alter the image in any way
* Attribution Share Alike: Must give credit, and the license is inherited. Doesn’t mean much for me, just means that the photo can never be locked down.

That is all for now, I’m having a bit of fun there. There are a lot of good photos and I can use them in print without feeling bad. As a note, you can click on ‘All Sizes’ to get the print quality photos.