The Internet is a great source for images to use in your blog or website. However, you should only use images that you have a legal right to use, and you should give proper credit for every image you use.
Copyright
Many images you find on the Internet, through Google Image Search, are copyrighted. The person who owns the copyright has the legal right to decide how the image will be used. If no information about copyright or licensing can be found, you should assume that the image is copyrighted and not licensed for use. In other words, the image is not free, and you can’t use it unless you get written permission from the copyright owner.
Where to Get Free Images
Fortunately, free image resources are available. Virtually all images published by the U.S. government are public domain, which means anybody can use them for any purpose. If you add “site:.gov” to your Google Image Search, you can trust that the resulting images are free to use, as long as they come from a U.S. government site and not a state government site. Another source of free photos is Flickr. Using Flickr: Advanced Search, check the box at the bottom of the page that says, “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.” Creative Commons is a license that allows the image to be used without written permission.
A third source of free images is. By policy, all images there are either public domain or have a free license such as Creative Commons or the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). What this means is that you can use any image or other media without written permission.
How to Cite an Image
Usually, it is not enough to simply cite the website where you got the image. You must give credit to the person who created it, as far as possible.
For government website images, usually the name of the government agency is all that is available.
For Flickr and other photo-sharing sites, you should find the name of the person who uploaded the image. Some users give their real names (which can be found on their profile), but others don’t. Use the real name if it is available and the username if it is not.
On Wikimedia, you are provided a description page with a large thumbnail of the image, followed by source information. Again, some users give their real names and others don’t.
In your citation, you should also give the “permission.” Examples:
• “(C) Copyright (copyright owner). Used by written permission” for a copyrighted image that you got permission to use
• “(CC) Some rights reserved” for an image with a Creative Commons license
• “License: GFDL/GPL/etc.” for an image with another type of free license
• Optional: “Public domain” for a public domain image
Finally, it is best to give the URL of the exact location where you found the image. On paper, list the URL starting with http:// — but for web pages, you can use a hyperlink.
Robyn Broyles • Updated May 30, 2011