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The easiest-to-navigate source of non-copyrighted images are the NOAA, NASA, US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management & National Park service photo streams on Flickr:
https://www.flickr.com/photospeople/noaaphotolib/
https://www.flickr.com/photospeople/nasacommons/
https://www.flickr.com/people/usforestservice/
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https://www.flickr.com/people/nationalparkservice/
https://www.flickr.com/people/departmentofenergy/
NASA photos are typically in the public domain, while photos from other agencies are typically governed by the "Attribution 2.0 Generic" license which requires giving appropriate credit to the agency that produced them. Check the license for each photo. Certain .
Beneath each photo is an explanation of the license. Photos denoted with:
- Public domain
- No known copyright restrictions
- United States government work
can be used freely. Photos denoted with:
- Some rights reserved
can typically be used with attribution. The license disclaimer is typically a hyperlink that explains the restrictions. Photos denoted with:
- All rights reserved
are copyrighted and typically cannot be used. For example, certain photos are provided by private citizens as a courtesy to a government agency. For example, this This landscape is copyrighted by a private citizen, Natalie Bell, even though it is included the US Forest Service's photo gallery.
There If you spend a few minutes browsing, you can see that there are absolutely stunning images in these galleries that are in the public domain or that can be used with attribution.
"Theodore Roosevelt National Park" is a public domain image from the National Park Service:
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"Young Monk Seal" is an Attribution 2.0 license image which can be used freely by crediting NOAA:
Photo credit: NOAA
"Jupiter's Great Red Spot as Viewed by Voyager 1" is a public domain no known copyrights image from NASA:
"Changing Arctic Ecosystem" is a United States government work image from the Department of Energy:
The second-most easy-to-use database of royalty-free images is Wikimedia Commons. It has over 72 million images and many of them are in the public domain and can be used for any purpose.
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