Of course everyone is shocked and saddened at natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti this week. Many of want to use photos of the aftermath in various contexts – to encourage donations, encourage prayer, etc. But the fact that a heart-rending tragedy has taken place does not allow us to use copyrighted pictures. The fact that nobody is likely to object to you using them in church is not the point. You shouldn’t use them without permission. There are plenty of blogs which have taken images from news sites without permission, but that doesn’t mean you should. Blogs should always have attributions for picture sources, which enables you to investigate permissions. If there’s no attribution, you must assume you cannot use the picture, not that you can. Almost all news site photographs are copyright, many from Associated Press, Press Association and Reuters. They’re all very hot on copyright.
BUT, Flickr is a great source of pictures which are licensed for use under the Creative Commons scheme. Some, if not all, of the various United Nations organisations put photos on Flickr under a CC licence, which allows you to use their images for free subject to one condition: that you give an attribution of the source. If I have time I add the text (something like © Joe Bloggs; used under a Copyright Commons Licence) to the edge of the photo so it’s there for future use; if I’m in more of a rush I use a text box in Powerpoint or put a slide at the end stating the sources. But it must be there [...]
This is the event at which I’m speaking on Friday evening:
The second of my two workshops at Good Book Company’s ‘Growing Young Disciples training day on youth and children’s work. The audio may be available on the GBC website at some point. You can download the pdf by clicking on the menu button in the bottom-left corner of the Slideshare player.
Evangelism in a Digital Age
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On Saturday (21 November 2009) I led two workshops at Good Book Company’s ‘Growing Young Disciples training day on youth and children’s work. The first was on Understanding Teen Culture. Forty minutes is a very short time to do anything other than scratch a tiny part of the vast surface which is youth culture. Anyway, [...]
via slideshare.net
Third session on Mark at GBU national conference, Portugal (20/9/09)
Posted via web from Tony Watkins
via slideshare.net
Second session on Mark at GBU national conference, Portugal (19/9/09)
Posted via web from Tony Watkins
via slideshare.net
First session on Mark for GBU national camp in Portugal (18/9/09).
Posted via web from Tony Watkins
Mike Williams at TechRadar.com gives a very useful roundup of his top twelve sites for sourcing free images. His focus is on images for the web, but the sites are equally useful for speakers. See my earlier post, ‘Preaching with images’ for other suggestions.
I thought I’d researched image libraries fairly well, but a couple of Mike Williams’s suggestions are new to me. Some of his suggestions, such as Free Media Goo and Pixel Perfect Digital, are for small sites that I don’t find worth my while visiting because I’m usually looking for very specific subjects, not just a nice image. I like the look of Unprofound, which is new to me, and I’m very surprised that I have no recollection of coming across OpenPhoto before. It doesn’t strike me as a particularly well-designed site, but I’ve found enough images in various categories to persuade me to make it part of my regular hunting grounds. [...]
I’m off to speak on Mark’s gospel at the national camp of the GBU in Portugal in September, which I’m really looking forward to. Nice publicity!
Bíblia e a Cidade
A round-up of some of the more useful image libraries for sourcing material for on-screen [...]
