This is a relatively famous painting. This is in the public domain because it was copyrighted before 1923. Anything copyrighted before then is now in the public domain. That's very good because you can get things for free now that could have earlier sold for who knows how much money and you can use them however you like. I got this image of a painting by Georgia O'Keefe from
cgfa.floridaimaging.com. Not everything there is in the public domain, though, so you'll have to pay attention to when the images where copyrighted.

This is from Burning Well.

Occasional Image

I know occasional image is a rather lame title, but I suppose lame is better than inaccurate. The photo of the beautiful sunset to the right is from the EPA. I forgot to record the URL, so you'll have to find it yourself. It is a pretty sunset, though.

Missing Days

I missed a few days, again. Maybe, instead of having an image of the day, I'll just post an image whenever I feel like it.

Image of the Day

Yesterday I just forgot to put a picture up. I'm out of the habit because of the long period of time without the internet. This one's from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Also, I'm going to start labeling the posts by what is in the pictures so that it's easier to go back and find which pictures you want. FWS has plenty of great images. This one is of a deer with some purple flowers. This is also the kind of picture you might find from the National Park Service. However, it's much more difficult to locate images there.

My internet just got fixed after it went out during the storm, which is why there has been such a long time without posts.
Anyway, this image is from Image After.

Image of the Day

This is a picture of a lotus flower from PD Photo. Also, I might miss a few days this week and next week because of finals.

Image of the Day

This picture is from Burning Well. Burning Well is a good place to get public domain photos with people in them, because the photographers are required to get a model release. Burning Well has a lot of photos.

Photo of the Day

This one is from Project Gutenberg. Gutenberg is actually a site with public domain books, but inside those books are public domain images, so it's still a great site for public domain images.

Image of the Day

This is from the USDA (Department of Agriculture). Their public domain photos can be found here. The US government is a great source of public domain images.

Model Releases and Commercial Use Policies

One problem with some public domain images is that when there are people included in a picture, often no model release is obtained. In order to use an image commercially, any people in the photographs must agree to it. To find out more about this, go to the Wikipedia article. Note that this is only a problem for commercial use of photographs with people in them. Also, BurningWell has photographs that have model releases.

Public Domain Image of the Day

This one is from the National Park Service. The index of their photographs is here. The website is quite annoying to navigate, but the pictures are great. Hopefully they'll improve the site. Also, you are required to credit NPS when you use their photographs.

Public Domain Image of the Day

This one is from freephotos.se, so if you like it, go there to see some more.

Public Domain Image Resources

Here are some sites with public domain images.
http://www.burningwell.org
http://www.freephotos.se
http://www.fromoldbooks.org
http://www.gutenberg.org *This is actually a site with public domain books, but some of those books contain images
http://www.pdphoto.org
http://www.public-domain-photos.com
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net

Definition of Public Domain Images

So what exactly are public domain images? Basically, they are images that anyone can use however they wish to. If something is public domain, it is not under copyright. Images may be in the public domain because the copyright date was a long time ago, or because the owners of the images wanted them to be public domain. According to answers.com, public domain means "Original material, such as art, literature, photographs, or music, that is available for use by anyone, without cost, because the material has not been copyrighted or because the copyright has expired." Read about the public domain here.