Using Flickr photographs
Posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 8:38pm. #
I was pointed at Flickr by a colleague a couple of years ago, when I went to South Korea and mentioned that I wanted to post pictures of my journey. Since then, I’ve been pretty hooked, and at the time of writing, I’ve uploaded over 2,000 photographs.
What’s also been interesting is the amount of use these photos have got. My pictures have been used in other peoples’ blogs, and on other peoples’ websites. As I’ve relaxed my Creative Commons licences, my photos have had more use. Recently, I’ve had some of my pictures used as postcards in Switzerland (for advertising a company); and today I’m trousering a small amount of money for apparently selling a (moderately blurry) photo for commercial use in a video. I changed the licence to allow this, but even then, the user insisted on paying me. I’m certainly not complaining.
Knowing that it’s a thrill to see my photos being used, a while back I had a fairly long conversation on Flickr itself to establish what their active community would be happy doing in terms of a commercial website using Flickr photos. While it’s clear that not everyone knows what they’ve done licensing their photos with a Creative Commons - and what they think is adequate attribution - we’ve been using suitably-licenced photos on Virgin Radio’s website for a while, like this. Even some of mine.
We try to contact users, and let them know when we use their work. Without exception, every user has been delighted to see their work being used elsewhere, and delighted at the attribution style. There is something hugely satisfying about using creative-commons licenced photos on the website, and the photographers being delighted about their work reaching a wider audience.
As a result of the original conversation, every photo I post (since around August 2006) has been licenced very loosely - just “BY” (requiring an attribution, which I’ll normally waive if people ask). I’m delighted to be adding rich images to the web, delighted when people use mine, but also delighted to be using great pictures from others, with their permission.
