Thing 3: Image Banks

And we're off again!  Thrilled to start a new course - thanks and congratulations to course organisers.

For the Image Banks thing, I decided to take a closer look at Pixabay.  I have never used this image bank before, or frankly even heard of it so I was curious to see how it works and how it compares with Google Images and Flickr.

My first impression was - wow!  This site is a goldmine for really good, vibrant contemporary images and the site is very easy to use.  You can browse by category or do a keyword search and then define your search by orientation, size, colour and whether you are looking for a photograph, drawing, vector graphic or a video (this last one blew my mind altogether!).  I tried lots of different keywords and combinations of keywords and was really impressed with the results.  I did find that there is a certain sameness to images in some categories but that is perhaps unavoidable.

Downloading an image couldn't be easier - just click on the image you want, then click 'download' and you're good to go.  If you are not a registered user you are asked to type in a captcha before you get your image but that's no big deal.  I really like the fact that one can freely use this image bank without having to sign up.

Image by Ohurtsov, Creative Commons Licence CC0 

One thing that disappointed me a little about Pixabay is that it does not contain any old material - early photographs, postcards and suchlike - or if it does I couldn't find it.  In that respect Flickr and Google Images are better.

For those who are interested, below are a few other websites which will allow you to download and use images for non-commercial purposes as long as you acknowledge the original source.  Make sure however to check the copyright status of each item before you use it because not all of them are free from copyright.

Imperial War Museum
National Portrait Gallery, London
US National Library of Medicine's Digital Collections (contains some images to which copyright may apply)
Library of Congress Digital Collections (as above)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (look out for the CC0 icon for images which are free to use)