When I first started this blog I’m ashamed to say I took a very cavalier approach to illustrating it. I copied and pasted quite a few images that weren’t mine to take (I know, I’m sorry!) It’s so easy to see a great photo on another website and think, oh that looks brilliant, I’ll use it. My reasoning at the time was, it doesn’t really matter because no one reads this blog anyway. But my thinking was wrong (as it so often is!) Besides not being entitled to copy other people’s photos willy nilly, my blog has grown in the meantime from a handful of family and friends to close to 400 followers, and besides that, those pages with “borrowed” images are still up there getting hits every day.
So now I’m going to have to go back through those early days and put right the wrong – you’ll be glad to hear. In order to do this I’ve had to have a good look at what images I can use, and which not, and so I thought I’d share a list of cool places I’ve found that let you download. (And PLEASE NOTE: these are places which allow you to copy the image as is, without altering it, and to use it on your blog. They are not necessarily images you can use for book covers. If you are wanting to use these images for anything other than a blog post, please DOUBLE CHECK the source to find out whether you’re entitled to do so, and please check whether you need to leave an attribution in the caption.)
Microsoft Office Online Gallery
There are also some museums that are offering free downloads from their fabulous collections. The terms of use for some of these museums need careful study, though, so please check them out before using the images.
The Metropolitan Museum, New York
The Te Papa Museum, New Zealand
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Hope you’ve liked the images I used in this post. I’ve discovered there are so many beautiful free images out there to choose from, you can get quite carried away looking through them all!
Do you ever use any of the sources I mentioned? Or do you know of any other good sources for free images? If you have any comments or recommendations, I’d love to hear from you!
Helena Fairfax 
Leave a Reply