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Using Flickr Images in Your Instructional Content

Sharon Huston

Instructional Support Specialist

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: September-October 2010

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Teaching-strategies

Introduction

Today's students live in the most information-rich society of all times. They watch videos on YouTube, listen to new bands on Facebook, converse with professional colleagues on Twitter, and comparison-shop everything from televisions to shoes. This digital lifestyle has impacted the online classroom, and students now expect to find multimedia in their courses.

One of the simplest ways to add a touch of media to your classroom is to add high-impact photography that helps drive home the point you are making. The photos could be in a PowerPoint presentation, in lecture/review materials, or even in a conference note. Finding good photos is a challenge for many instructors due to the complexity surrounding photo licensing. This article examines the benefits of Flickr and the use of its advanced search options, briefly discusses some licensing conditions that instructors need to keep in mind, and poses reliability questions that will help you make good photo choices for your instructional content.

There are numerous photo-sharing Web sites on the Internet; Flickr is one of the world's largest sites that allow photographers to share their art with the world. Flickr is for photos what YouTube is for videos: The best-known and most-used site for that type of media. Chances are excellent that you will find something that is both relevant and useful for your instructional content.

There are many benefits to using Flickr for finding a photo for your instructional content:

Cost. Photos in Flickr that have a Creative Commons license are free for you to use. You do not have to create an account in Flickr to be able to download one of these photos. (Note: Some concepts about Creative Commons licensing that you need to be aware of are discussed briefly later in this article.)

Volume. As previously mentioned, Flickr's photo collection is enormous. (A recent article from CNN notes that the 5 billionth photo was just uploaded to the site.) At the time this article was written, Flickr contained 155,304,847 photos that had Creative Commons licenses. This large volume just about guarantees that you will be able to find a photo that meets your needs. A quick Flickr search of the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill, for example, produces thousands of photos on this event.

Candid photographs. Many of the photos in Flickr are candid shots of real people engaged in real activities. Stock photography collections, by contrast, are often shot in a studio using models and carefully controlled sets and lighting. Stock photos often feel artificial—but candid shots such as those found in Flickr provide a sense of realism.

Legal. While instructors can use copyrighted material (including photos) under Fair Use guidelines and the TEACH Act, these situations are sometimes confusing and limiting. By using Creative Commons-licensed photos from Flickr, you are interacting with people who openly want you to use their content.

When searching for a photo in Flickr that you can use in your classroom, your options are almost endless. However, you will want to limit your photo searches via the Advanced Search option to those that have a Creative Commons license (an option that Flickr allows photographers to apply to their artwork) and that allow you to modify, adapt, or build upon that content. Here's why:

If you conduct an open/unlimited search of all photos in Flickr, you may come across an image you want to use—but its licensing rights might be "all rights reserved." In these cases, you would need to seek permission from the photographer to use the photo, which could turn into a time-consuming and possibly costly process—and it's possible that the photographer will deny your use of the image. By limiting your search to those photos that are licensed through the Creative Commons—a "some rights reserved" optional licensing system that works within existing copyright law—you will easily be able to find photos that you can use freely and quickly.

By also choosing to search only for those images that allow you to modify, adapt, or build upon the image, you are ensuring that you can use just part of the image (cropping) if needed or change the color of an item in the photo—both of which are considered modifications. If you do not choose this search limit, you may come across a photo you really like but will have to use exactly as it is. A related tutorial demonstrates how to find these Creative Commons options within Flickr's Advanced Search function.

The Advanced Search options also allow you to fine-tune your search terms, search for a specific type of content (photos, illustrations, animations, etc.), filter the type of media, and search by date. All of these choices can help you further narrow down the thousands (or millions) of returns you might otherwise receive. 

Understanding Creative Commons License Conditions in Flickr

When you select a Creative Commons-licensed photo from your Flickr search results page, the right side of the photo page will contain the image's license information. This section of the page will display small icons of the specific license conditions and a link with more detailed information about those conditions and what you can or cannot do with the photo. Depending on the photographer's needs and desires, the icons displayed will be a "mix and match" of the four Creative Commons licensing conditions. The table below, from the Licenses page of the Creative Commons Web site (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/), identifies and briefly explains these four icons for those who apply these conditions to their own work:

What do these conditions mean for you, the hopeful user of the image? How do they impact your use of the photo? (Note: For full details on all the license conditions, please see the Creative Commons Web site.)

Attribution: All Creative Commons licenses share one common condition—attribution. Anyone using an image from Flickr that has a Creative Commons license must give the photographer credit in the manner specified by the photographer. Be sure to check how the photographer wants his or her work attributed (consult the photographer's profile page), as this could affect your use of the image. For example, if the photographer specifies that his/her name must be stated directly under the image but you planned to display several images on a page in a grid, then meeting the attribution requirement would force you to sacrifice your design aesthetic. Alternately, you could send the photographer an e-mail explaining the situation and asking for an exception-in which case, you will want to keep a printed copy of the photographer's response.

Share Alike: Photos in Flickr that have the "share alike" condition allow you to change or build upon the original photo. However, if you wish to then license/distribute your resulting work, you can do so only under the same, similar, or a compatible license. If you are unwilling to put your work into the Creative Commons and allow others to create offshoots of it, then it is best to avoid images with the Share Alike condition. It is also necessary to avoid Share Alike if your work includes copyrighted material.

Non-Commercial: While classroom use of a Flickr image in a public university is obviously non-commercial, it is wise to consider other uses of your chosen photo. Will you possibly be using it in a presentation at a conference for which you will be paid an honorarium? Have you fallen in love with an image and want to use it in a textbook you are authoring? If either of these or a similar commercial issue is at hand, you will need to be sure that your chosen image is acceptable for commercial usage. Otherwise, for regular classroom usage only, you can use photos that are for commercial or non-commercial use.

No Derivative Works: Changing the Flickr image in any way constitutes making a derivative. This includes cropping, color correction, applying vignette or framing treatments, and other common photo-editing tasks. The safest route is to avoid using images that bear the "no derivatives" condition. If you select the Advanced Search option in Flickr that allows you to modify, adapt, or build upon an image, you should not be seeing this licensing condition on any of the photos that show up in your search results page.

Evaluating Reliability

Once you have your search options and photo usage in Flickr determined, you need to select a photo that comes from a trustworthy provider. Because the vast majority of Creative Commons-licensed content in Flickr is created by individuals rather than established organizations, it is important to consider the reliability of the source—especially for an academic endeavor. Some key questions to ask when evaluating reliability include:

• Did the photographer actually take the photo?
  In a perfect world, before applying a Creative Commons license to an image uploaded to Flickr, individuals should first consider whether they own the copyright for the image. Some may not. If they do not own the copyright, then they cannot legally license the image through the Creative Commons. Obviously questionable cases, like the Marilyn Monroe photo shown below that was supposedly taken in 2009, should be avoided. 
  
   
  
  Another common questionable scenario is when an individual uploads scans from family photo albums to Flickr. These photos may be years old, taken by various family members who may not even be aware their photos now bear a Creative Commons license. When a user uploads a digital photo to Flickr, Flickr also includes information about the camera that took the picture. This information, known as Exif data, increases the likelihood that the person uploading the photo actually took it. Here is an example Exif data page from the Flickr site:
  
  
  
  You can view a photo's Exif data by selecting a link on the photo's Web page. In the example provided above, you can see that Exif data provides the camera name, the date and time the photo was taken, the shutter speed, the focal length, and more. Note that Flickr does not display Exif data for scanned images.
  
  It is worth noting that Flickr currently asks photographers to select a default copyright notice to be applied to each photo that is uploaded. It is quite easy for a photographer to upload a batch of photos that should not have a Creative Commons license (if that is the photographer's default) and then forget to change the license. In the future, if Flickr will require photographers to choose a license per upload session or per uploaded photo, this may no longer be a potential issue.
     
• Who is the photographer?
  Most photo-sharing sites, including Flickr, have a photographer profile section. This area will often display a photographer's real name (as opposed to his or her site ID), Web site, geographic location, and other basic information. Usually, profile pages also allow photographers to make a brief statement. If the profile page is blank, you may want to consider finding a photo from another source.
   
• Has anyone else used this photo or other photos by the photographer?
  Many photographers like to talk about where their photos have been used. Usually, photographers will note usage in the comments section of the photo's Web page.

Documenting Your Use

Once you have selected a photo from Flickr, it is good practice to print out the information related to it. At a minimum, you will want to retain:

• The photo
• The photographer's name
• The Creative Commons licensing icons
• The date the image was retrieved

As a courtesy, you may want to let the photographers know how much you enjoy their work. Describe how you will be using their images and thank them for their generosity. If a photographer should object to your use, this also gives you the opportunity to find a new (better) photo.

Conclusion

Flickr provides millions of photos that can help enrich your classroom and help drive home certain points that you want your students to understand and remember. Using Flickr's Advanced Search capabilities, you can quickly and easily find the right photos whose licensing conditions fit your needs and that come from reliable providers.

Related Resources

• Using Flickr to Find and Download Photos with a Creative Commons License