An Overlooked Resource: Public Archive Photos With No Copyright Restrictions

Who doesn’t like old photos? And they’re made to order for blogging and social posts.

Stock photos look posed and phony. But a lot of old archive photos have this natural quirkiness– probably because they aren’t trying to be something they’re not.

You can almost hear them saying: “Come on, add a caption! Stick on a new head!!”

Here’s an example (below). I used an image editing program (Pixelmator) to select the two figures and paste them onto a plain background. Then I added dialogue and substituted my pretty face for the certificate.

I used the After image in a promotional video. You can view it here.

The original photo had no copyright restrictions. I could modify it and use it for free.

Where do you find such images? I find mine in the The Commons, which is run by the photo-sharing site, Flickr.

The project’s goal is to provide access to publicly held photo collections.

Some of the biggest and best: Internet Archive Book Images (over 5 million images scanned from books), The British Library, The Library Company of Philadelphia (some great illustrated posters), The U.S. National Archives, The New York Public Library, and The Library of Congress.

There are about 115 participating institutions. You can see the full list here.

You never know what you’re going to find: photos, prints, woodcuts, diagrams, maps, advertisements, illustrations, cartoons, postcards– and on all sorts of subjects.

Most Commons images do not have any copyright restrictions. In such cases, you’ll see “No known copyright restrictions” displayed beneath the image. You’re free to use those images any way you want.

Note: You can search the photos in each collection by keyword: “buildings,” “sports,” “music,” etc.

Tip: Before entering your keyword in the Search field at the top of the page, click the magnifying glass icon just above the first row of images. That will activate the Search field and restrict your search to that particular collection. Then type your keyword into the Search field and hit enter.

Search results vary from excellent to baffling… 😊

Here’s another example. I used the After image in the same video.

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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, editorial, branding, social media, and content marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

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