Do you need photos for your travel site?

Just copying something from another web site is no option. There is a copyright on photos, even if it is not explicitly stated. Sometimes you might get lucky to stumble upon a nice picture on the web and the owner lets you use it on your site, especially if you credit the photographer and provide a backlink.

So far I was lucky, I had travel photos for all my sites from former journeys. But if I continue to build new sites for countries I haven't beento recently, it may became a problem. So I did a quick search and choose these two sites to bookmark.

Browsing the web I stumbled upon this site, where you can download royalty free photos for free if you provide a backlink. The photos are mostly taken by amateurs, resolution is low but sufficient for use on the web. Quality is an issue here, but if you are on a real low budget, try it. Bigphoto

If you need high quality photos, check Bigstockphoto - photos for about $2.50 or so each - certainly a huge savings off the typical $50 stock photos you are probably used to at other sites. This month (March 2007) they have a special promotion: 100 photo credits for 100 US$; normally, if you only buy a few credits, you pay 2.50 US$ per credit.

Update:

Great free photos mostly by amateur photographers can also be found at stock.xcgn . Downside: The photos have different usage options and the license requieres you to 1. submit a review (that's the easy part) and 2. also to get the photographer's permission via the site. That can take any time from a few minutes to forever. Be carefull with photos that show people, there is usually no model release on the photos. You need to get it from the photographer if you want to avoid potential legal trouble later.

But it is worth a try.