Solopreneurs or Small Business Still Need to Know How to Safely Use Images for Marketing

I’ve written articles and given presentations on basics of graphics and finding good, quality, safe-to-use stock photos for marketing, but it finding and properly using images online can still feel tricky. And most of that teaching about images had been in my other business, for my nonprofit clients. My solopreneur, small business pals need this advice too! And you need to know where to find quality images that represent your diverse audiences. So much of traditional stock photography is bland, boring, and white-washed. So, here are my tips on finding, and safely using, other people’s images for your marketing purposes.

Another reason I care about this topic – I’ve been a serious amateur photographer since I was a kid. I’ve lost count of how many cameras I’ve owned – and there’s probably a half-dozen of them in spots in my office just now! I even found a few older film cameras (one with a roll  from the late 80s still inside!) last summer during a major cleaning project! I’ve had Instamatic with flash cubes, Polaroids, 110 film, my first 35mm point-n-shoot, disposables, the glorious 70s era Pentax SLR I learned to shoot and develop black&white film for, the expanding collection of DSLRs, action cams, and a new mirror-less camera I now own.I may have a little problem! I try to take classes every year to get better and to use my own photos were possible on my site and in my marketing.

AND ... I have that graduate degree in library and information science, so I have a little training in intellectual property and copyright. Plus it's a basic part of the library profession's ethics code to always look out for and protect IP and copyright. Yeah, I'm a bit nerdy and a stickler for this stuff! 

Even with the crisp, high-def, high mega pixel cameras we carry in our pockets now, it’s still not always possible or practical to take and use our own photos. Sometimes a story or content needs a particular type of image. And what if we need photos to represent our diverse audiences, but it's not possible to do a photo shoot? Or you really want a certain object, a look, or an aesthetic?

So where do we turn to safely find quality, representative photos?  

To stock photography.

And now, to Creative Commons licensed images.

Read on for tips, warnings, definitions, and my lists of favorite photo sources to use in your marketing.

But First - Know That Diversity, Inclusivity, Authenticity in Images Matters

Representation matters. Period. 

Your audience and prospective clients need to see themselves represented accurately and authentically. People want, and respond to, seeing people like themselves in every situation. Our websites, e-books, reports, course materials, and social media posts should show the diversity that is out there among our communities.

But the world of stock photography and images for use in marketing materials have been “so historically stereotyped that representation often dips into parody.”

Finding appropriate, representative photos has been hard.

It can be hard to find diverse stock photos representing a true range of people, across ethnicity, race, culture, body size, gender, setting, and action or role. And when you did find a photo, it would have a 'token' person of color stuck in the background. Or someone would be dressed so stereo-typically and inappropriately for the context of the photo that it felt like a joke to the nationality or ethnicity 'represented.' Or photos with larger bodies only showed them in unhealthy situations or as fat-shaming. How awful! Where were the black business women, the Latinx business owners, the BIPOC students studying or coding? Where were the active people in wheelchairs, or my fellow larger women doing Zumba? 

There are better photo options now

Thankfully more diverse photo collections and resources have popping up regularly, presenting a beautiful range of skin tones, ethnic backgrounds, genders, and ages.  Some of the larger, mainstream stock houses have added diverse photos, but in side collections. Granted, a few that I loved and recommended (like WOCInTech, ColorStock), have stopped or disappeared; and many of the better, more diverse collections are royalty-free cost-free, so you pay per image or join a monthly membership. But there are options out there and it shouldn’t be hard at all for you to find and use truly diverse and representative images in your marketing.

Even my fave graphic design tool – Canva – has commissioned photographers to broaden their collection - and experience from the nearly 2 years since this commitment, shows that images are indeed much more widely representative and still good-looking and useful.  [Canva's story on inclusion, diversity, Black Lives Matter, including their natural women collection.].

Some Basic Image Use Tips to Remember

• Just because an image or creation you see online doesn’t have a copyright symbol © doesn’t mean it isn’t copyrighted – EVERYTHING is automatically protected by copyright as soon as you create it. [Get the basics of copyright in this brochure]
  
• Check the terms of any social platform if they have their own rules on re-sharing of images. Know what’s ok for each.
  
• Just because you didn’t mean to, or know that, you infringed on copyright doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Someone can (and often does) still sue for copyright infringement. There are attorneys who troll social media and the web for this. 🙁
• Know what your intentions are for an image you will use in marketing – think of everywhere it COULD eventually appear – and make sure you’re covered for all those possibilities. Get the right licenses.
• Don’t assume “Fair Use” applies or is in play just because you might be using for an educational purpose or because you are not directly selling where an image is used.
  
• It might be ok to share an image that the creator first shared on social media – if they’re signaling that sharing was their intention. Use tools that are designed for sharing with proper attributions.
• Plus, what a creator thinks is ok may be different than what law says is ok. It’s NOT ok to borrow, steal it, print it on flyer or a stick it on a t-shirt. If someone, even someone famous, didn’t intend for a pic to go public, it’s not ok for you to keep sharing it online.

When in doubt, get explicit permission for exactly the use you have in mind, from the original copyright owner of the image. When still in doubt, do NOT use that image!

Let's Talk About Stock Photography - What Are Stock Images?

Until fairly recently (mid to late 2010s), if you wanted to find and use an image for marketing purposes and you weren’t taking your own photographs or hiring a photographer, it meant turning to stock images.  Now, there are more people sharing images online under other licensing arrangements - notably Creative Commons (more on that below). You may not need to purchase credits or images very often – but there are instances where it’s absolutely necessary to protect yourself from copyright infringement or costly court battles.

There are 2 Main Kinds of Stock Images

• Royalty Free – the most common type; you are paying for near unlimited use of an image, IF you follow its license rules.
  
• Rights Managed – less common; there are more restrictions on the scope and timing of use

Royalty Free does NOT mean “free”, as in no-cost. It means you do not have to pay ongoing royalties to the rights owner for every use of the image, or for the number of times it is seen, nor do you have to secure the model release, etc. BUT you must pay for the license, the right to use the image (including multiple times) in a certain manner. Costs for the license are often based on image resolution size, related to file size. What size you need to purchase a license for depends on what you’re using the image for – in a blog post vs. high resolution in a video vs. print quality, etc. [see chart below] 

NOTE – most royalty free image licenses are for NON-COMMERCIAL use. Which would cover most blog posts, presentations, use only internally in an organization.

Just because you may not be ‘selling’ a thing (like a free report, e-book, social media post) , doesn’t mean you couldn’t run afoul of COMMERCIAL vs. NON-COMMERCIAL use. This is where you may need to consult an expert in intellectual property, trademark, copyright law.

Commercial Use  = commonly defined as use that is intended for commercial, promotional, endorsement, advertising, or merchandising purposes. Examples could include a branded organizational website, brochures, products, product packaging, advertisements.

For example – if you are selling that e-book, you may need a different license than if you used an image in a blog post.

Editorial Use = any image marked as such can only be used for news or purely informational purposes. This is mostly because they feature other entities that have their own copyright, trademark, and intellectual property issues – such as celebrities, public figures, commercial products, logos, etc. Don't use editorial images on posts that are promoting anything. 

[Update: oh man I am geeking out - Deposit Photos made a beautiful interactive history of stock photos, with emphasis on all the changes in the 2000s that have led us to having more resources, more natural and authentic images, more diversity, and how those style changes came to be.]

What Size Image to Purchase

The resolution and size of the image you need may depend on how or where you intend to use an image. Consider all the places that image may appear in your marketing - and make decisions based on license level and image size accordingly. 

• For use only on web pages, blog posts, or social media - a lower resolution and smaller pixel total size is ok.
• You do NOT want large (in terms of data/memory, i.e. MB) files uploaded to your website as it will slow the loading of your pages and affect your total website storage at your host. Use the smallest file size you can, that allows for images up to 1000 or even 2000 pixels (e.g. in header images).
  
• Higher resolution is necessary for anything that will/could be printed - even if the image size itself in the document is small.
• Resolution  (pixels or dots per inch/dpi) and file size (kb/MB/GB) are NOT the same and not necessarily correlated - you can have a high res image that is not a huge file size in data.
  

Why Should You Care About Royalty Free Stock?

The safest images you can use in your marketing materials are ones that you yourself have taken and thus explicitly have permission to use. Baring that (because we’re not all photographers, nor can we take all the images we may need), purchasing a license to use a photo is the next safest way to go. Buying the rights through a well-established stock site, that’s done all the legal work for you, can save you hassles in the long run. Yes, it costs money and I realize you have limited budgets – but if you want a really safe route, this is it.

Beware using the Google Image search feature or even looking at the Usage Rights options - this is not always correct!

Another big caveat and to bust a misconception …

Merely giving credit or attribution or a citation to an image you found online does NOT count as permission to safely use that image. UNLESS you acquired that image specifically from a site that offers images in exchange for certain forms of attribution. If you see an image you like on some other site, you can’t ‘borrow’ it, use it on your site and just link back to the original. Well, that’s better than nothing … sort of. But you didn’t explicitly ask for permission from the photo’s copyright owner. Go ask permission! 

Finding Royalty Free Stock Photos

* I’ve had accounts or purchased images over the years from Corbis, Fotolia, iStock, Shutterstock, 123RF, and Deposit Photos. I don’t personally recommend Getty Images because of some predatory, overly legalistic, and other wise unsavory behavior on their part. However, Getty has several diverse collections they've added under partnerships in recent years: 67Percent (plus-size women), LeanIn (women in business leadership), and the Muslim Girl Collection. 

The only active R-F stock account where I have credits right now is Deposit Photo - I think they are less stereotypical, bland, or white-washed compared to other sites. But I mostly use CreativeCommons C0 images from sites like Unsplash, Pixabay and Nappy. Or the images from my Canva (affiliate) account (which admittedly often come from Unsplash!).

** Another note - I have a Canva for Work/Canva Pro account – and that includes access to a LOT of their stock photos, for free. [the image in the header/featured image for this post came as a free photo while using Canva] You do get more photos vs. the 100% free Canva (affiliate) account.  [In 2020 they made some changes to make more images widely available but this many change again - if you want the most photos and to not worry about purchasing via other stock sites - upgrade to Canva Pro. ]

Canva (affiliate) offers very cheap vectors, illustrations, and photos to purchase and use in your designs. Ironically – many of the photos they charge $1 for come from some of the CC0 sites seen below, others from other stock photo sites. But at least you know if you purchase an image as part of your design, you are in the clear. Always check licenses and terms in case they change!