A photobank that's available to you…
The Public
Domain System





         If your specialty area is agriculture, space, military, etc..., you can add to your collection with selections from more than 14 million free photos.

 
 
        You paid for them. They are yours. I'm talking about the many government photos that are in the Public Domain and are housed at the Library of Congress, NASA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, military agencies, and other federal and state governmental archives of Public Domain photos. These photos were paid for or acquired by tax dollars and they are for use by the general public as well as the government. Trouble is, these photo collections are not widely publicized, so the general public doesn't know how to access them.
         You can access them and include them in your stock collection or use them to answer photo requests from photobuyers. Last month here at PhotoSource International we published two requests of this type. One was for an aircraft carrier and another for a Russian MIG. Tom Carroll, photography entrepreneur extraordinaire from California, whom I interviewed for the "Snap Shot" section of PhotoStockNotes, is an expert at finding hard-to-locate photos for his clients, and has found Public Domain archives to be especially helpful in many cases. "I once got a photo request for the interior of a nuclear submarine," Tom says. "In the past I would have to give a negative to such requests. Then I thought, 'Maybe I can find this at a government agency, through the Internet.'"
         Using search engines like Yahoo or AltaVista, Tom found several photos of the interiors of nuclear submarines at the U.S. Navy Web site. "Searching for information from a U.S. Government office always takes a minimum of six office inquiries," says Tom. "But I finally found the right location to obtain that particular picture."

ENLARGING THE SMALL ONES

          Because the pictures were for editorial use, there was no need for model releases. However, the pictures were all in compressed 72 dpi format, called "thumbnail" images, and not the reproducible quality that photobuyers need.
Very few photobuyers care to use a picture that small. On top of that the deadline was close. Tom didn't have time to go through the usual process of having a color dupe or B&W print made by the government agency.
          He learned of software that will uncompress images from 72 dpi to as high as 300 dpi, which is acceptable to most photo editors. The program Tom uses to uncompress the images is Genuine Fractals 2.0, and costs $159.00. The company now produces a pro version (1.0) and costs $299.
         "Depending on who the customer is, I've found this an easy as well as lucrative way to supply my customers with highly specific photos which they normally can't locate," says Tom. He received $875 from his client for his research and photo enhancement of the submarine image. He doesn't charge for the picture itself, since the photo is free, as Public Domain. In his invoice he writes, "Photo (Public Domain): no charge. Research and Fulfillment: $…………..
          Tom once filled a request for a sunken Russian submarine. "I've never been on a submarine, but I found the photo." Because the photo was used postage stamp size, he didn't have to use the fractals process. He Emailed the image to the photo editor of a major magazine and was paid $800.
         To access these photos and utilize them you need only know the method to acquire them. Again, these photos are rightfully yours, since you or your forebearers helped build the collection.
         The process goes like this. You get a request for a Russian MIG (the request for a MIG that came in to our PhotoDaily marketletter a few weeks ago paid $250). You go to the Air Force Web site (http://www.af.mil) and click on the "images" button. At the search slot, type in "MIG AND image." Notice that I didn't enter the word 'Russian,' because not only would the search bring up the word MIG but also many pages with the word Russian. Also, I capitalized the word AND, which is Boolean language that narrows the search only to those pages that contain a photo or drawing. The Russian MIG site address that will come up (if you choose this combination of search words) is: http://www.af.mil/cgi-bin/multigate/retrieve?u=z395, 0r://dtics11:1024/airforce!F6263%3a926430283%3a%28 Russian%20MIG%20%20image%29;esn=FT%5fTEXT%20HTML%200;ct=text/html
         Now that you have a picture of a MIG, you screen capture it, and load it onto your hard drive,
where you process it through the Genuine Fractals software to increase the dpi (dots per inch) from 72 to 300. This will be enough resolution for a satisfactory half-page picture.
         The Genuine Fractals software, by the way, is available in both Windows and MAC versions. Some photobuyers can accept a digital file "as is," but many would prefer a print.
         Tom Carroll says, "The photo can also be printed in color or B&W. Not all printers are capable of handling fractal files. I found the best printer is the LightJet 5000 (Cymbolic Sciences International). Service bureaus in major cities have this printer.
         "The key word is jpg! But TIFF could be a problem, It's best to use jpg with the fractals program." says Tom.
         If you decide to try Tom Carroll's method of accessing Public Domain photos to answer photo requests of photo researchers, let us know the results.


           


           

Tommy Thompson

Kerry Kolb

Jon Saban

Jake Nelson