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.