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If you’re looking for interesting photos to use in a presentation, blog post, report, flyer, website or other material, you should check out Flickr’s large library of photos. Its massive collection is a treasure trove of photos and its Advanced Search feature is your treasure map to help find the best picture for you to use!
Why I’m a Fan of Flickr
Many of the photos I’ve used at The Wonder of Tech since the beginning of this blog have been from Flickr. Even the header photo I’m currently using at the top of my site is from Flickr.
I’m a big fan of Flickr for many reasons:
1. Free Storage
Flickr gives you 1 TB (terabyte = 1000 GB) of free photo storage, still the most generous available. See, Flickr – The Solution to Your Photo Storage Issues
2. Flickr’s large library of photos
With the site’s generous offering of copious quantities of free photo storage, its library continues to grow larger daily.
3. Advanced Search
Navigating this massive library may seem challenging but by understanding Advanced Search, you’ll be finding interesting photos to use in no time.
How to Search for Flickr Photos
Often when I need a photo for a blog post, I turn to Flickr. By using their search fields, I can minimize my search time and maximize my chances of finding a photo I can use.
Searching Flickr isn’t obvious, you might miss some of the best photos if you don’t know how to navigate the site. By following these easy steps you can make the most of your search and find the best photos more quickly:
1. Go to flickr.com and log in to the site. (Flickr is owned by Yahoo and your Yahoo email address and password are your sign in credentials for Flickr.)
2. Type your search term into the search box in the upper right corner of the screen and hit Enter. I used “Philadelphia” as an example.
3. You’ll be shown a grid of your search results.
4. Click Advanced Search in the upper right corner of the screen. You’ll be taken to this page:
5. Fill in the information to make the most of your search. You can refine your search by:
- keywords
- tags
- entire site vs. limited
- Safe Search
- Content type: photos, screenshots, illustration art
- Media type: photos, videos
- Date
- Usage rights (see below for a discussion of usage rights)
[warning] At the top left side of the results screen is a drop-down menu for searching according to License Rights. Use Advanced Search instead for the most accurate results. [/warning]
Refining Your Search Results
Because of Flickr’s extensive photo collection (did I mention it’s very, very large?), your search results may contain an overwhelming amount of images for you to sort through, making finding the perfect image a bit, well, challenging. The good news is that you can refine your results to further improve your chances of finding that perfect photo.
In the upper left corner of your results page you can see a drop-down menu showing Relevant as the default option. Click on the arrow to reveal other choices:
- Recent
- Interesting
I especially like Interesting, though the photos often depart significantly from Relevant. Exploring the Interesting photos can take you on a new path, somewhat like Pinterest Guided Search. Of course, one person’s definition of Interesting can vary from yours but generally the photos in the Interesting section are of particularly high quality.
How to Download Flickr Photos
When you’ve found the Flickr photo you want to use, you can download it to your computer, usually with a choice of sizes.
[tip]Note that if you right-click on the photo, saving the image is not one of the choices on Flickr.[/tip]
To download a photo, click on the photo in the grid of photos on your results page to open the photo page. Click on the down arrow with a line underneath it in the bottom right corner of the screen. Choose the size you wish to download.
Saving Favorites
If you find photos you like you might want to save them as favorites rather than downloading them. If you’ve signed into your Flickr account, you can save photos to your account as favorites.
To save a photo as a favorite, click on the photo to open the photo page. Click on the star in the bottom right corner of the screen to save a photo as a favorite.
To find your favorite photos on Flickr, click on You at the top left corner of the screen and choose Favorites. You’ll be taken to a screen with the photos you’ve saved as your favorites.
Giving Props to the Photographer
In the Comments section below each photo on Flickr you can leave a note to the photographer expressing your gratitude, complimenting the photographer and sharing your thoughts about the photo. If you use a photo in your blog post you can leave a link to your article in the Flickr comments section.
If you use a photo from Flickr, include credit to the to the owner of the photo in your work.
A Word about Usage Rights
Not every photo available on Flickr is available for all uses. Many photos on Flickr are restricted in use, designated by an “All Rights Reserved” notice on the photo page.
Millions of images are available on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, allowing for a broader use of the photos. See Flickr’s Explore Creative Commons page for more information about Creative Commons licenses.
Flickr’s Advanced Search feature helps you avoid the heartbreak of finding the perfect photo only to discover that the license rights don’t match your needs.
Flickr lets you search photos according to the type of license you need. As discussed above, you can search according to Commercial use and whether you wish to modify the photo.
⇒ Make sure when you arrive on the photo page to check and confirm that the license stated on the photo page matches the license rights you searched.
If you find a photo you want to use but the license rights don’t fit how you want to use the photo, don’t despair quite yet. You can contact the owner of the photo to ask for the license rights you need. Often you may not get a reply but you may get lucky and get the permission you need. The owner of a fireplace photo was kind enough to grant me rights to use his photo for my article: Warm Up to a Virtual Fireplace.
NOTE: Although I am a lawyer, I am only providing tech advice, not legal advice in this or any other article at The Wonder of Tech.
Your Thoughts
Do you have difficulty finding photos to use? Have you used Flickr to find photos to use? Do you like its Advanced Search functions? Have you ever found the perfect photo only to discover that you couldn’t use it because it was limited to All Rights Reserved? Share your thoughts with us in the Comments section below!
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* Penn’s Landing image courtesy of John Delacy via Flickr and Creative Commons (edited)
** All Rights Reserved image courtesy of Hiking Artist via Flickr and Creative Commons
Hi Carolyn,
Good to have you back, and I hope you had a nice little break too 🙂
Oh yes…I do use Flickr images and I think some of them are really wonderful, and as you mentioned – all free! I use a few other free sites also, but when I can’t find anything apt, I always turn to Flickr. The only problem my end is the time it takes to load the images because of the connectivity issues, as compared to a few other sites, but I do use it if required.
Yes, the Advanced search feature, and even the relevant, interesting or recent are great choices, depending on what you are looking for. So far, I’ve tried contacting a few photographers but one needs to have a week or so in hand to get their reply and by then it becomes late, or perhaps we need to search these images and keep them well in advance. I just had 2 photographers who were kind enough to let me share their copyright images, and I know of one who gives permission each time – she is wonderful as I love her images.
Overall, awesome site and it’s got some lovely images for free, provided you have the time to go through them, if you are really keen to choose the apt ones, just like me – I can take hours making a choice, sometimes much longer than writing my post…lol…
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Hi Harleena, You’re right, you can get lost in Flickr because there are so very many beautiful images to see! The site really has a bountiful collection of high quality photos available for us. Of course not all of the photos are of the same quality but enough are amazing to make the site extremely worthwhile.
I’ve never had a loading issue with Flickr, the images load only for the screen I’m seeing. I usually spend some time on that screen and then scroll down to see more.
I also sometimes visit other sites to find photos but Flickr really is my Go To site for photos. I’m glad you’re a fellow Flickr fan, Harleena!
Hi Carolyn,
The legal reservations are important. Getty Images uses Flickr and they are quite fussy about copyright. They sent someone a bill for thousands and threatened to sue. I had a request to use some of mine that are on Flickr for Boating World magazine so gave the permission. I think many photographers will unless they are trying to make money from photo libraries. It’s a Bank Holiday weekend here, so photography is restricted by the rain!
Hi Mike, Yes, it’s very important to be mindful of the licensing rights when using a photo. That’s why I like Flickr because you can search according to usage rights. When I use Advanced Search I can filter out photos that are All Rights Reserved to find ones to use here at The Wonder of Tech.
Hi Carolyn,
A very informative article. I always knew about the potential of flickr.com
It is a haven for photos. From what you have mentioned above, I believe that it is more than enough what a reader needs. Thank you for this awesome post. I’ll be visiting your blog from now on get more topics such as this. Take care !
Regards,
Sanjay……
Hi Sanjay, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! You’re right, Flickr really is a haven for photos, both your own with its 1 TB of free storage, and for finding others’ photos with its Advanced Search feature and massive collection. I’m so glad you found this article useful, Sanjay. Thanks for taking the time to stop by and share your thoughts with us!
Hey Carolyn,
I do use flickr to search images but haven’t tried its advanced search feature, may be I could get much better images next time after using advanced search. I generally use creative commons images that allows reuse rights.
Hi Pankaj, Yes, if you want to search for photos you can use under a Creative Commons license you will definitely enjoy Flickr’s Advanced Search feature. I have found many excellent photos to use for free that way and avoided the annoyance of having to check each photo to see whether it’s available or not.
Unfortunately, I have not found the filter at the top of Flickr to be accurate in sorting through the results so I stick to Advanced Search.
Happy photo hunting, Pankaj!
Hello Carolyn,
I’ve been a long time fan of the flickr creative commons search. It’s one of the largest crowd sourced creative commons photo repositories that I know of. I used other free stock photo sites previously such as sxc.hu but the selections are usually limited. Do you happen to know of any tool to check if the photo is in fact something that originated from Flickr and not someone uploading copyright material?
Hi Carolyn,
Flickr has always offered Images with HD quality. And I love to browse through it for images that I cannot find anywhere else. As I use it most often but that’s only to make my desktop look good.
Though I loved the images of Flickr but what I get attracted to are mostly Licensed one so sometimes I feel disappointed.
And I have never tried the advanced search before. I thought the search box is enough to find images as I find quite interesting images from there only.
Hey Carolyn,
I’ve been to Flickr a few times to find photos but I haven’t ever used the advanced search feature. I knew about the creative commons licenses but I guess because my searches were so general that I didn’t find anything I wanted to use.
I know it’s like most other sites that if you give the owner credit then they don’t mind you using it. My goodness, that’s only natural too.
Thanks for explaining this better and I’ll have to give them a try the next time.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne, Yes, sometimes you can’t find what you want on Flickr but by using different keywords you may find just what you want. By using Advanced Search and filtering for the Interesting photos you can improve your chances of finding useful photos on Flickr.
I’ve never had a photographer turn me down when I’ve requested to use their photo but I’ve had plenty of them not respond to my request.
Hi Carolyn Nicander Mohr,
Very well written post which contains all the necessary information regarding find photos though Flickr. Thanks for sharing such an excellent post.
Hi Muhammad, I’m very glad you enjoyed this article. I hope you find plenty of photos to use on Flickr!
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. My list of advantages are pretty much in-line with Stitch and some of the other posters. Hands down it is the fastest, most reliable, easiest-to-use photo sharing site out there bar none. I love flickr for the community, it’s nice to not only be able to share photos with people I already know like my friends and family
Carolyn i love your post …. I give a nice little vote for Flickr …I’ve tried others but found Flickr the most feature packed, easy to use and accessible way to have my pics online.
Thanks for the tutorial on Flickr 🙂 Good job
Hi Dennis, Great to hear from a fellow Flickr fan! Yes, a picture really can say 1000 words so getting just the right picture can be very important. But you don’t want to be disappointed by finding photos that aren’t available for your use via Creative Commons.
Flickr’s Advanced Search feature makes finding the right photo with the right license much easier.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Dennis!
Flickr is actually the number one source of images for my blogs – espeically my travel blog. My photography skills are somewhat lacking but who even needs them when you have access to such an awesome selection of photos in the Creative Commons!
Hi David, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! It’s great to hear from a fellow fan of Flickr. You’re right, it’s hard to beat the quality of photos you can find for free on Flickr!
Hello,
Thank you so much for this clear explanation, very helpful and much appreciated. I have spent quite some time trying to figure out exactly how to access and use free Flickr photos.
Hi Qadir, Yes, Flickr is incredibly useful but not intuitive to use. When you know how to use it, you can find useful photos much more easily.