When looking for images that can be used on an official federal government website or blog it’s best to avoid unfiltered image searches in favor of online collections with public domain content or to connect to a primary image source through your agency, according to a post on digitalgov.gov, by Judith Snyderman, a stock image specialist and contractor for government agencies.
Some agencies maintain license agreements with copyrighted news and stock image libraries, and that’s a good place to look. Public domain sources include the National Archives, Library of Congress, DoD’s DVIDS, and USA.gov. Otherwise, agencies may feature some of their best images on official pages on Flickr, Tumblr, or Instragram. Creative Commons is another great source: www.search.creativecommons.org, Snyderman notes.
Her post was about a new tool from Getty Images that provides access to millions of its images free of charge, with the caveat that they are embedded with Getty’s frame code. That means each image will show the Getty logo and carry a photo credit. Getty also may choose to superimpose ads on the content. Advertising makes the tool off limits for most federal government purposes such as display on a public website or in a post on an official blog. However, Snyderman notes that the Getty tool could still come in handy on third party websites and social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter.
