Public Domain Images

[jcopper]

Hi. I'm new here, so please let me know if this is in the wrong forum.

I am looking for images of past Olympic skaters that are in the public domain or are available under an open creative license.

If you know where there are any archives or repositories, please let me know. Thank you.

[Lanna]

You're very unlikely to find public domain photos of Olympic skaters (I know there's a US government one of Sarah Hughes at the White House, so it's public domain, but she's not skating). However, Wikipedia has a lot of images under Creative Commons/GFDL licenses. Make sure you read the license first before using, though. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...Figure_skating

There might be fan-taken photos there that have been released under PD, I don't know off-hand.

Flickr also has images under CC licenses. Here's a Flickr search for "figure skating" with CC licenses allowing commercial use, adaptation, modification or building upon.

[jcopper]

Thanks for the reply, Lanna. I am looking for pictures for Wikipedia and have already checked out the Commons. I looked at Flickr, but I don't think I'll find anything there. I need some pictures from the late 60s and early 70s.

I'll just have to keep looking in some out of the way spots.

[Lanna]

Thanks for the reply, Lanna. I am looking for pictures for Wikipedia and have already checked out the Commons. I looked at Flickr, but I don't think I'll find anything there. I need some pictures from the late 60s and early 70s.

I'll just have to keep looking in some out of the way spots.

I'm not entirely sure that stuff would exist on the internet. Most of the CC stuff now is recent, because photographers are releasing their own recently-taken images. There's some stuff floating around from earlier, but anything further back than ten years is hard. I wouldn't trust anything that old that's on Flickr (and certainly nothing from before digital cameras), because it's probably an image they got someone where and put the wrong tag up on it and claimed to have created it themselves. And 60s/70s is too recent for PD.

The only images that come to mind that I know are available under CC are the images uploded to Wiki Commons from the German Federal Archive donation, are under CC-BY-SA and are primarily German skaters, so they're under http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...s_from_Germany . Also poke around the competition by year categories http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ca...figure_skating.


I don't know, but you might have some luck if you find an image and contact the photographer/copyright holder and get permission to reprint. I have no idea how much that would cost, but that might be more worth the time than trying to find something under a reliable CC license (Wiki is generally pretty good at yanking photos with fake licenses when someone alerts them to it.)