Images: Unlimited Usage

You'd think I'd be the one to ask this, but honestly, I'm a little unsure myself. For one of my upcoming projects, I'll be needed several hundred, if not several thousand animal photographs. So far I've been able to collect 100+ from personal contacts, but it seems I'll need to start out-sourcing some to complete the collection. Normally, I'd use places like dreamstime.com and istockphoto.com for this, but some of the things I will be using the photos for (wallpapers, e-cards, etc), are against their TOS. Does anyone know a good place where I can get a large quantity of quality images where my uses wouldn't violate the TOS?

 

Maybe something like one of the Corel Photo Libraries. They are cd packs of high quality images that you can get royalty free use out of. I don't know if e-cards would violate their TOS, but I would think it was what they were designed for.

They run like $100/CD and each CD has about 100 images.

They don't sell them on the corel site anymore... probably discontinued or something, but I found them here:
http://www.fotosearch.com/stock-photo-bundles/COR398/

 

Cool, thanks. What about using images in the public domain? Would I be able to use images from the public domain for the above uses?

 

I would search government supported websites like the fish and wildlife service, USDA Forest Service etc. I think much/most of theirs are public domain.

 

PD images are available for anything. The library of congress is a great resource for PD images. They usually specify what the status of a photo is - whether it's PD, copyrighted, or unknown.

 

Thanks... I'll check that out... any other URLs worth checking out?

 

webshots.com is another one I recently was made aware of. There was another thread here about stock photo web sites that I can't seem to find right now. It had reference to two or three other pay-per-photo or membership sites.

 

Have you tried ebay? I'm sure that playing around with some searches will bring you something good... just did a quick search and for example found this

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14306&item=7155844200&rd=1

 

The problem with most CD's with photos on it, and most stock photography sites is that they limit what you can use the photos for, and many would consider my uses as redistribution, as I would be using them for e-cards, in a photo gallery, and for wallpapers... so far, only http://sxc.hu/ will let me use their photos for my prementioned uses...

 

This site might work for you. I don't know about the watermark and they require a link if you use them...

www.freenaturepictures.com/animal-pictures.html

 

Thanks, I'll take a look.