It goes without saying that choosing good quality images for online media is very important, be it a website, email or blog. The right images present your brand to the consumer in the way you want and shows customers the tourism product they are interested in.

All too often the image selection process is not carried out with enough attention. They are often thrown in at the end and with little regard to the accompanying content. Sure, not everyone has access to a quality internal image bank or the budget to employ a professional photographer. However, in addition to a number of low cost stock image sites, there are a great number of excellent images out there that can be used for free through a Creative Commons License.

What is the Creative Commons License?

The basic function is to enable copyright holders, such as photographers, to grant some or all the rights of their creations to the public while retaining others and is an alternative to full copyright.

The best way to illustrate this is to look at an example. Yahoo’s Flickr is the well known photo sharing application used by millions to share their images. If we take this example image of a shot of Trafalgar Square you’ll see on the right hand side a link called ‘Some rights reserved’. The link displays the license attributed to this particular image, and in this case, one is free to share and remix the image as long as the work is attributed.

The different licenses determine how a piece of work can used and this image of the same London Square can not be used for commercial purposes. Flickr has a brief definition covering the main license types and includes a search filter to only display those photos that are licensed by Creative Commons. For more information, visit their site at http://creativecommons.org/ or read this short primer.

Image resources for your tourism e-marketing

Flickr – As mentioned above, there are millions of images to search from of varying quality. Use the advanced search page to specify the type of Creative Commons license required.

stock.xchng – A very popular and excellent resource concentrating on free stock imagery with over a quarter of a million images. The site can be a bit slow due to the heavy server load and it does require you to register to download the full size images. The comprehensive filtering system allows you to set useful parameters when searching the database, including over one hundred pre defined categories.

everystockphoto – Not a resource itself but a search engine for creative commons photos from a variety of sources including Flickr, stock.xchng, morgueFile, Freerangestock and Image After. Can be a real time saver.

There are many other sources for free stock photography and the following contain links to relevant sites.

Free Stock Photos, Where to Find Free Images and Visuals for My Blog and Blue Vertigo Web Design Resources.

If you know of any other image banks please let me know.