Flickr

Today's topic, and final of my 4 projects for class is going to be on Flickr, the online photo warehouse. This site is so good for finding portraits i'm not even kidding It was like an angel descending from on high to bless us puny mortals with the gift of decent portrait shots and landscapes. I know that Deviantart.com also has a decent stock art section but that's just one, rather drama-queen filled aspect of the site as an online gallery for artists. Seriously you type in portraits in deviant art 8/10 times you'll find some mascara'd up teen acting like the world is collapsing around them. Not on flickr, this site has a gigantic database spanning all ages, children, the elderly, the middle aged you name it. And their all usually really good quality images. You can choose the size of the image you'd like to download.

Here's a link to a search for portraits, http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=portaits&m=text#page=0 the 1st page has so much diversity that if you need, say, at random, a middle aged native american you can find it in a simple search. Just type, native american, http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=native+american&m=text  Bam, theres children, elderly, a man in around his 30s or so. And all those images are nice and crisp. The photos you find on flickr are perfect for drawing from, there big, theres tons of detail, and lately I haven't had an issues with watermarks.

The downside to this is the copyright, most of the time you'll find information about the useage of the image beneath it when you open the image, however some do restrict the image completely, not allowing free downloads without the watermark.

The biggest trade off, censorship. Flickr is heavily, heavily censored. You can't find many images to fulfill certain criteria if too much skin is showing, male or female. It's a little ridiculous at the extremes flickr goes to to remove images and users, no longer being a free gallery but a "family friendly' one, which is not how it started out as. Other than that, using digital media for drawing comes with a few other trade offs I've stated in older posts, loss of depth, flattening of surfaces, loss of dynamic lighting etc. However with the high quality nature of the image son Flickr, its not as bad as using other sources. some images are so clear you capture more detail  than you would have otherwise.