Recently to spruce up my articles, I’ve been nitpicking stock photos most relevant to my content. And the one stock photo source which I love to use, even for my website design mockups is from iStockPhoto. They’ve a large variety of user-contributed photos from amateurs to professionals.
Keeping a standard of professionalism, I contacted their relations to ask:
Am I allowed to use your watermarked stock photos in my blog articles?
Honestly, I was really looking forward to the team granting me permission to do so. But, their reply was:
No, you cannot use watermarked images in this way as you will need to obtain a license for the images in order to use them on your blog.
The after-feeling drove me to write this article about free publicity, laying right there. Seriously, isn’t a blogger using the watermarked images free publicity staring back?
Image credit: SXC
Not because I’m an exceptional blogger but because I’m willing to advertise the provider’s photos here by using their watermarked stock photos. If one of the terms requested were to always end my posts with a backlink, I would. Heck, I’d even happily give backlinks to each photo I used directly to its author’s page.
Anyway, since I can no longer use these lovely images, I’ll resort back to free stock photo libraries or hand-sketches (eek!). Unless some other stock photo library like Corbis, Inmagine, Getty Images or other willing library would happily permit me to use their stock photos.